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This article titled “Vauxhall’s future in UK is secure, says business secretary” was written by Julia Kollewe, for The Guardian on Thursday 16th February 2017 15.35 UTC<\/a><\/p>\nThe UK business secretary has said he has been reassured about the future of General Motors\u2019 Vauxhall production operations in Britain, following a meeting with the US carmaker\u2019s chairman. <\/p>\n
Greg Clark sought an urgent meeting with senior GM management after the US car company announced earlier this week it was in talks to sell its European Opel business<\/a>, including the Vauxhall operations in the UK, to France\u2019s PSA Group, which owns Peugeot and Citro\u00ebn. <\/p>\n The Vauxhall plants in Luton in Bedfordshire and Ellesmere Port in Cheshire employ 4,500 staff. Thousands more jobs rely on its UK supply chain.<\/p>\n Clark met GM president Dan Ammann and Len McCluskey, general secretary of trade union Unite, in London on Thursday. <\/p>\n Speaking after the meeting, Clark said he had been reassured by the company\u2019s intention to build on the success of its Vauxhall assets. On Thursday evening he was reported to be travelling to Paris for meetings with the French industry minister, Christophe Sirugue, and PSA Group board members.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is some way to go in discussions between GM and PSA but I was reassured by GM\u2019s intention, communicated to me, to build on the success of these operations rather than rationalise them,\u201d Clark said in a statement. \u201cWe will continue to be in close contact with GM and PSA in the days and weeks ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n However, GM issued a more circumspect statement. \u201cWhile we have no definitive news to report at this time, we can affirm that our objective in exploring opportunities with PSA Group is to build on the success of Opel Vauxhall and to put the business and the operations in the strongest possible position for the future,\u201d the company said. \u201cWe look forward to engaging with our stakeholders as part of these ongoing discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n McCluskey called on the government to ensure that the interests of British workers are looked after in talks between the two companies and ministers in Paris and Berlin.<\/p>\n \u201cMy immediate priority now is to understand where Peugeot is now in this process, which is why I am contacting the CEO of the company, Carlos Tavares, to request urgent talks.<\/p>\n \u201cUnite is committed to talking to all the concerned parties in the UK, Germany and France to ensure that the case for the UK workers is pressed at the highest levels.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I also say this; our government should demand that whenever the carmakers are meeting with the French and German governments, then the UK government must be at the same table.\u201d<\/p>\n Ammann headed to London after he and GM\u2019s chief executive, Mary Barra, flew to Germany on Wednesday for talks at Opel\u2019s headquarters in R\u00fcsselsheim am Main, near Frankfurt. He will also hold talks with Vauxhall executives in London before returning to the US.<\/p>\n Opel employs about 35,600 people across Europe, including 18,250 in Germany. Berlin has vowed to intervene to protect German jobs<\/a> if the deal goes ahead.<\/p>\n In a letter to Vauxhall staff sent on Tuesday, Barra wrote: \u201cOur companies are currently exploring numerous strategic initiatives aimed at improving the profitability and operational efficiency of GM and PSA Groupe, including a potential acquisition of Opel Vauxhall by PSA Groupe. Such discussions are ongoing.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile there can be no assurance of any agreement, any possible transaction would enable PSA Groupe and Opel Vauxhall to leverage their complementary strengths, enhancing their competitive positions for the future in a rapidly changing European market. GM and PSA Groupe would each be able to capitalise fully on their respective strategic priorities. We would seek to ensure any transaction would serve the best interests of all our respective important stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n Barra urged workers not to let the talks become a \u201cdistraction to the important work you are doing\u201d.<\/p>\n Howard Wheeldon, a veteran analyst in the City, said: \u201cVauxhall Cars can survive as an assembler of cars in the UK provided that its management, workers and trade unions come together and find an alternative plan.\u201d He said Ellesmere Port could well lose out under PSA ownership and suggested that management and others could look into buying out the plant from GM.<\/p>\n Credit ratings agency Moody\u2019s said the deal would make strategic sense for PSA because it \u201ccould release substantial synergies and improve PSA\u2019s market position in Europe where the company continuously lost market share since 2010\u201d. <\/p>\n Lead analyst Falk Frey said: \u201cWhile we caution that the acquisition would increase further PSA\u2019s reliance on the European market to more than two thirds of group sales from 61% in 2016, diversification within Europe would increase as Opel is strong in markets where PSA is not, ie Germany and the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010<\/p>\n Published via the Guardian News Feed<\/a> plugin<\/a> for WordPress.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greg Clark says General Motors has reassured him that it aims to build on success in Britain after meeting about planned Opel sell-off<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10220698900476085_349663338397715":"","twitter_1370559253_1370559253":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[61,342,24,340,344,345,64,5,75,63,343,105,65,341],"class_list":["post-4992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-article","tag-automotive-industry","tag-business","tag-general-motors","tag-job-losses","tag-julia-kollewe","tag-main-section","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-the-guardian","tag-trade-unions","tag-uk-business","tag-uk-news","tag-vauxhall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}