Before being finally CAP by Cerberus investment fund

If the contractor is before any risk taking, then Frank Stronach is well one. At the age of seventy-six, this Canadian businessman of Austrian origin owner of Magna International launches a sacred bet, assuming for the resumption of Opel Vauxhall, breaking and the great wall of China which traditionally separates the motor equipment manufacturers. With some chance of success, since, for the moment, his record is better than that of Fiat by all the players who will be called upon to decide: General Motors (GM), the current owner of Opel, and the German Government (Government of Berlin as the Länder concerned).

Change of business model.

Why want to take the step today, embodying a deprived constructor world crisis of the automobile Very present in North America and to a lesser extent in Europe, Magna International already climbed 3rd behind of global automotive OEMs, German Bosch and Japanese Denso. But his fate is always closely linked to that of the three major American manufacturers, which provide 60 of its revenues. The collapse of the Big Three in recent years, led to a collapse of the turnover of the Group of Aurora, Ontario and the losses of 563 million dollars (402 million euros) from July 2008 to March.

Already, in the spring of 2007, Frank Stronach had expressed its intention to break the deadlock and change its "business model", assuming for the takeover of Chrysler, its second client after GM, in partnership with Russian Oleg Deripaska. Before being finally CAP by Cerberus investment fund. But the message is then delivered: Magna International was ready to get out of its self-sufficiency, that has characterized its history, to expand its range of trades and to mobilise for this its financial war chests. With this time, Opel online focus and liquidity available to $ 1.7 billion, the project is fairly nearby: it would be to create a constructor this both in Europe and Russia, with the support of industrial gas, the Russian manufacturer controlled by Oleg Deripaska, who is no longer a shareholder of Magna International, but still an ally. Opel is already well established in Russia, but some of its cars are imported, undergoing extensive rights of customs, then they could very well work around the obstacle with gas plant.

Archetype of self-made-man

On the German Opel plants, they would have intended to assemble cars from other manufacturers, as already Magna Steyr, the Austrian branch of Magna International, on behalf of Chrysler, BMW, Mercedes and soon Peugeot or Porsche.

Beautiful path in any case than that of Frank Stronach, the archetype of self-made-man. Born in Austria as Franz Strohsack, he emigrated to the Canada in 1954 with all luggage apprenticeship training in a workshop for the manufacture of tools. After having founded his own company, Multimatic, a small workshop which will begin by making ties of sunshade for GM, it the merges with another of his "shoots", Magna Electronics, which then became Magna International, in 1973. Its rapid growth, then, without major partnership, has been hampered only once: in the early 1990's, when the crisis of the American automobile less severe that the present had almost send it to the bankruptcy court. A severe reorganization later, Frank Stronach did not want to relive an also painful episode. And, in the meantime, he found Russian friends to get out of this bad password.