French carmaker Renault said Wednesday it had begun to sell off its remaining shares in Swedish truck manufacturer AB Volvo, which has a market value of around 13 billion Swedish kronor ($1.9 billion), to reduce the company's debt and raise funds for investment.
Saab has announced official figures of their multi-billion kronor debt, as the struggling car manufacturer and its assets go under the hammer on Tuesday.
Swedes showed a renewed zeal for buying new cars in December, with new vehicle registrations shooting up 13 percent compared to the previous year, new statistics show.
Sales figures for Saab Automobile continue to disappoint, dipping 61.7 percent in September compared with the year before. Meanwhile, Volvo’s car sales jumped 8.1 percent.
A nearly four percent increase in worldwide sales for Volvo Cars in August signals a turning point, according to company head Stephen Odell, despite a continued sales drop in Europe.
Car sales in Sweden have fallen off so sharply that Japanese automaker Toyota was forced to lease a cargo ship in Malmö to store 2,500 unsold cars, according to a port official.
Senior General Motors executive Bob Lutz has suggested that a solution to the problems faced by Swedish car firms Volvo and Saab would be to merge them.
Fredrik Reinfeldt on Sunday blasted plans by his European counterparts to aid their domestic auto sectors with taxpayer money, calling instead for a cut in capacity.
After meetings with executives from General Motors and Ford at the Detroit auto show Monday, a Swedish government official reiterated that the state had no intention of buying Saab and Volvo.
Sweden is set to provide several billion kronor worth of loans and loan guarantees to embattled automakers Volvo Cars and Saab Automobile, according to a report in the Swedish business press.
The Volvo Group has said it would help support Volvo Cars in order to protect the Volvo brand in the event that the carmaker’s parent Ford goes bankrupt.
Rolf Wolff, dean of the school of business at Gothenburg University, called on the government to nationalize Volvo Cars to safeguard the pool of knowledge on which the Swedish auto industry is based.i
Human cadavers were used in automobile crash tests conducted in the last year by General Motors, the US-based parent company of Swedish car manufacturer Saab.
The Swedish Road Administration (Vägverket) has put forward a new definition of eco-friendly for cars purchased by the state which excludes 60 percent of models currently classified as green.
