Sberbank Are Already Interested In Selling Their Opel Stake

Oops. Looks like the Magna International-Opel deal has a slight flaw. Germany’s government recently pushed so hard towards a Magna-Opel deal, where they said that they would pretty much only really fund this deal.

Well, now the deal is over and Magna has obtained the papers for Opel, where their partner Sberbank from Russia has announced that they are already interested in selling their shares. A Sberbank statement said that another state-run bank might find itself being the new partner if the company cannot find a Russian carmaker as an ally.

We’re very much interested in getting our stake in the hands of an industrial partner… One of the possible options if we have any difficulties with establishing such an industrial partner would be sell our stake to VEB bank,” CEO German Gref said in an interview.

The Opel-Magna deal had a little clause, added by the German government, which said that Magna could not sell their shares to another party. Funny enough, this did not effect Sberbank who seems to be allowed to sell their shares without the need of other shareholders approval.

“According to the terms of the deal, we have a right to sell our stake without any consultations with other stakeholders to GAZ and VEB bank,” Gref said.

Your bad, Germany.