Bloomberg News Service
SEOUL — General Motors Corp. and Fiat SpA, now sifting through the accounts of bankrupt Daewoo Motor Co., will probably buy only one or two Korean plants and its domestic dealership network, officials and analysts said.
Daewoo’s creditors, which last week got court approval to proceed with the sale of the country’s second-biggest automaker by output capacity, say the joint bidders show little interest in buying Daewoo’s overseas plants, leaving three domestic factories and a sales network on the table.
While GM officials won’t say which assets it will bid for, they’ve warned their value is dwindling as time goes by. Daewoo Motor sales halved in the first two months of the year as customers avoided its showrooms and strikes disrupted production.
"I don’t think GM wants to target all segments," said Kim Hag Ju, an auto analyst at Hyundai Securities Co. in Seoul. Daewoo’s newest plant at Kunsan "has the right size for a buyer who wants to target niche markets in Korea," he said.
Buying Korean plants would give GM and Fiat, the sole bidder, a foothold in Asia’s second-biggest car market where imports make up less than 1 percent of sales. Even so, analysts said the bidders may balk at buying the Bupyong plant because it was built three decades ago and is the oldest of the plants.
Daewoo Motor is worth about 3.76 trillion won ($2.95 billion), or 93.1 billion won more than the value of its assets should the company be liquidated, according to Young Wha Corp., an accounting firm hired by the receivership court.
Ford Motor Co. last September dropped its $7 billion bid for the company because it couldn’t agree with creditors.
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