FRANKFURT (AFP) — German solar energy company SolarWorld unveiled on Wednesday a surprise billion-euro (1.26-billion-dollar) takeover bid for Opel, a unit of US General Motors, which would create the "first green European car company."
A SolarWorld statement said the company would offer 250 million euros in cash and 750 million euros in bank credits for Opel's four auto plants and a research centre in Ruesselsheim, near Frankfurt in western Germany.
Opel It attached several conditions to the deal however, including a complete split of Opel from GM, which is threatened with bankruptcy, and compensation payments of 40,000 euros per Opel worker, which would total roughly one billion euros, the statement added.
SolarWorld, which also sought a liquidity guarantee for Opel from the German government, did not say who it expected to pay the compensation.
Opel was not in a position to immediately give a reaction, a spokeswoman told AFP.
A stock trader told Dow Jones Newswires that "at first I checked to see if today is April 1," or April Fool's Day, after SolarWorld shares plunged by 14.90 percent to 13.7 euros in midday trading on Frankfurt's TecDax index of high-technology issues.
The index had fallen by 1.86 percent overall.
But a stock dealer also said the bid was not totally out of the question, "because Opel merely needs a white knight in order to get rid of the Americans."
A so-called white knight is an investor that arrives to save a company from dire financial straits or a hostile takeover.
It was not clear how SolarWorld intended to finance its bid for Opel however, and an analyst said he did not know who could pay the compensation in question because "General Motors certainly can't."
SolarWorld said it would continue to produce OPEL cars in the plants, and would develop "a new generation of low-emission and energy-saving automobiles."
SolarWorld employs 2,000 workers, while Opel's German staff numbers about 26,000.
The German automaker has been hit by slumping sales and financial problems at its parent company, and has asked the German government for loan guarantees in the event it can no longer obtain financing from GM.
In Washington, GM chairman and chief executive officer Rick Wagoner joined executives from Ford, Chrysler and the United Auto Workers Union to plead for 25 billion dollars in US government-backed loans, warning that the economy will face a "catastrophic collapse" if officials do not bail out the auto industry.
In Strasbourg, eastern France, EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said Wednesday that the exceptional circumstances in which Opel finds itself justify "exceptional measures," though he was likely referring to the company's request for state loan guarantees rather than the SolarWorld bombshell.
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