Germany

Every country has a problem child or two in the financial services sector. America has Citigroup and Bank of America. Britain has RBS and HBOS/Lloyds.  And Germany has Hypo Real Estate.  I have been chronicling problems at the…

Roland Koch, the leader of the German state of Hesse, has dismissed the possibility of Chinese auto manufacturer BAIC acquiring German carmaker Opel.  Below is my translation of today’s Spiegel article explaining this. Clear rejection of…

Rio Tinto was one of those companies which levered up just as the economy was turning down, rushing its bottom line ad forcing it into the hands of Chinalco, a large Chinese commodities company.  However, as commodity prices have…

You probably saw in my links that Fiat had bowed out because of German government demands. The Magna story also comes via the BBC: Canadian car parts maker Magna International is the preferred bidder for GM Europe, owner of Opel and…

I was on the BBC yesterday talking autos and my commentary was almost entirely political.  So, as we await the likely General Motors bankruptcy, I think it bears discussing how political this process has been and will continue to be.…

Volkswagen and Porsche have finally hammered out a merger plan after some bitter infighting. My understanding is that the new company will carry the Porsche name and trade under its ticker symbol. In addition, the company plans to raise…

Last week I wrote a post suggesting that the Germans were getting tired of bailing out their banks and had moved to more draconian solutions to 'fix' the banking sector. Nationalizing Hypo Real Estate this week will be the first move in…

The first bank nationalization in German history is about to take place. At issue is Hypo Real Estate (HRE), a troubled Munich-based company that lends to commercial property developers and to build offices, hotels, roads, airports, you…

The German car maker Daimler wants to put the Chrysler chapter behind it, so it will give up its remaining 19.9% stake and forgive all remaining loans. See BBC story.

On Friday, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) leaked a bombshell - a confidential report by Bafin, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, found that German banks were sitting on over 800 billion euros in toxic assets. Just…