DETROIT – General Motors released its financial results Thursday and the numbers are worse than expected. Revenue fell by $31 billion, and the company lost $31 billion. In the fourth quarter revenue fell by $16 billion and it lost nearly $10 billion. Most worrying, GM lost money everywhere in the world, including Asia and Latin America, which had been making money. And it burned through more than $5 billion in cash in the last three months of the year. Grim news indeed.
And it just gets grimmer. Industry analyst Laurie Harbour-Felax predicts that Chrysler is doomed. WardsAuto.com reports that she says the company won�??t make it through the year, but she forecasts that some of its products will stick around, probably minivans, Ram pickups and Jeeps. She says Chrysler�??s financial problems and the fact that Cerberus is dying to get out of the auto business sets the stage for something bad to happen. Let�??s just hope she�??s wrong.
We�??ve been warning for months now that suppliers are teetering on the brink. The Wall Street Journal says that Visteon, which used to be part of Ford, is inching closer to bankruptcy after losing $663 million. And the French government is going to take a stake in Valeo, the giant French supplier. But curiously the French government will only buy 19 million euros worth of stock, or a little over $24 million. That doesn�??t sound like a lot of money now that we�??re all getting used to talking about trillions and trillions these days.
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