General Motors Co said on Monday it had decided to sever its ties to Saab and its commitment to supply it with vehicle components and the 9-4X model because of the risks posed by the pending sale of the Swedish auto brand to Chinese owners.
“Although General Motors is open to the continued supply of powertrains and other components to Saab under appropriate terms and conditions, GM will not agree to the continuation of the existing technology licenses or the continued supply of 9-4X vehicles to Saab following the proposed change in ownership as it would not be in the best interests of GM shareholders,” GM spokesman Jim Cain said. ….
On Friday, GM had said that it would be difficult to support a sale of Saab if it hurt GM’s competitive position in Chinaand other key markets.
China’s Pang Da Automobile Trade Co and Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile have struck a deal to buy Saab from its current Dutch owner, Swedish Automobile , in what amounts to a rescue plan for the Swedish auto brand formerly owned by GM.
But the deal had to be approved by GM, which still has preference shares in Saab and has supplied the Swedish auto brand with crucial components. …
The new deal which had been announced last week was for 100% ownership to pass to the Chinese. When asked if GM licences would be available if the plan went back to the Chinese buying just 53.9% of Saab – as originally envisaged – the GM spokesman refused to speculate.
Saab is on its last legs but it appears from an investigation conducted by Swedish Television (SVT) that Victor Muller has rewarded himself handsomely even while supplier bills have been unpaid. Muller has little substance in his history but a long track record of grand schemes and – it seems to me – very gullible investors. Employees in his various loss-making companies have continued in the false hopes that Muller is so good at building up. They would seem to have a misplaced loyalty to their brands but instead have actually been relying on an unreliable Muller.
SVT Report has investigated the complex transactions between Saab, Saab’s parent company and Victor Muller’s private companies. His compensation through bonuses, salary, equity, and professional fees add up to 18 million Kronor. This is at the same level as Leif Johansson the former CEO of Sweden’s largest company Volvo Trucks, where Volvo Trucks has about 90,000 employees while Saab has fewer than 3000 employees.
Saab has also paid Victor Muller’s invoices even while supplier’s bills have remained unpaid. Saab’s annual report details consultancy fees of 4 million kronor including a bonus of 1.76 million to a company that Muller controls – Latin America Tug Holding registered on the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. ….. Saab’s parent company has paid consultancy fees of €550 000 and an additional bonus of €508,571, making a total of about 10 million kronor to Victor Muller. He has also received 120,000 shares that he has sold for nearly four million kronor. Beyond that, Saab’s parent company has bought services from companies affiliated with Victor Muller for nearly seven million. Victor Muller also has very attractive interest rate agreements for the money his company has lent to Saab. The interest on loans is set at EURIBOR plus 6 -10 percent. This means that Saab could have paid him around 12per cent interest on the loans. Swedish Television have not been able to reach Victor Muller.
I was not much impressed by the “back-room” election of Håkan Juholt as the leader of the Swedish Social Democrats and nor have I been very impressed by his performance to date. But the current media storm over his “failings” (excessive housing and travel expense claims, vacillation on immigration and citizenship and embellishing his credentials as a young politician) is I think entirely fuelled by forces within his own party which have decided to take revenge for the manner in which they were ignored and overridden in the battle for the party leadership. The timing and the drip feeding of all the revelations over the last week screams of an “inside job”. There are some who are now blaming the media feeding frenzy – which no doubt exists – but it was surely initiated – and perhaps orchestrated – by a few of his party “colleagues”.
But this internecine feuding will surely keep the Social Democrats out of government for a long time to come.
Irrespective of whether he will actually be found to have broken any laws or parliamentary rules, his position and that of his party has been destroyed for the next election in 2014. The prevailing perception – that will surely dominate the next election – is of a party which is supposed to represent workers, weaker members of society and the downtrodden but where the representatives are a grubby, greedy, hypocritical lot looking for every possibility of lining their own pockets. They have opened themselves up for unending attacks regarding their ethics. All social democratic politicians can now be accused of embodying a “do as I say and not a do as I do” mentality.
Needless to say, the left-wing of the party which organised the coup which made Juholt the party leader 6 months ago are now whining and busy blaming the “neo-liberal” wing for leaking and initiating the whole affair. As one of them- Daniel Suhonen – puts it:
Maybe Juholt needs to go, maybe he deserves it. But the story of how this has happened for probably all the wrong reasons, and how the trap was sprung by the neo-liberal, right-oriented social democrats in the county of Stockholm has yet to be revealed.
Victor Muller is still carrying on with the Saab circus and has been constantly talking up the Chinese investments due to be paid in at any moment. But this has been going on for a long time and now Reuters reports that the Chinese application to make the investment has not even been submitted to the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) for approval. Such approvals can take a long time and if the application has not even been submitted it totally undermines all the “fairy stories” that Muller has been spinning.
Muller is contradicting Reuters but I am afraid his statements are bordering on fantasy and I prefer to believe that Reuters have got it right.
Pangda Automobile Trade Co , China’s largest listed auto dealer, said on Wednesday its investment agreement with Saab had become void after the Swedish car maker sought bankruptcy protection.
But the Dutch owner of the troubled firm later offered conflicting details, saying the 245 million euro ($352 million) deal with Pangda and Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co was still valid. ….
… Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an industry forum in Chengdu, Pangda chairman Pang Qinghua said, “Now that it’s in bankruptcy protection, all the previous pacts are not valid. It’s up to the court to decide. It can also find a new partner”. Pang added that the Chinese side has not yet submitted a proposal to the Chinese government regarding the Saab deal.
But in a text message sent to Reuters, Swedish Automobile NV CEO Victor Muller said simply: “On track with both Pangda and Youngman”. In June, Saab’s owner had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co to take a 29.9 percent stake in the company and Pangda to take a 24 percent stake for a combined 245 million euros.
Saab has still not received a vital bridge loan of 70 million euros ($96 million) that was secured by Youngman, money that is key to its short-term survival. The investment hinges on approval from the Chinese and Swedish governments and a green light from the European Investment Bank and Saab shareholder General Motors . Asked on Wednesday whether the deal had been submitted to China’s National Development and Reform Commission for approval, Pangda’s chairman said: “Youngman’s Pang Qingnian is the one that is supposed to send the application to NDRC. As far as I know, he is soliciting opinion among industry experts regarding the deal, they are not done with it yet.”
Pangda had already paid 45 million euros to Saab for a separate deal to purchase 2,000 cars but had not received any cars due to a production halt since April.
“As for the cash injection (into Saab), I can do that only after the government approves the deal,” Pang said on Wednesday.
So with Youngman and Pangda not submitting their application to NDRC and since they need to have such approval, the only conclusion that one can draw is that any new Chinese investment money is never going to come and that Victor Muller is continuing to play a game. The Swedish Courts were remarkably lenient in allowing Muller to attempt another reconstruction of the company just after the earlier attempt at reconstruction had failed. Hopefully the courts will now have had enough of Muller’s representations of forthcoming support and investments which always seem to be grossly exaggerated and – in some cases – just untrue.
This year’s Economics Nobel has been awarded to Thomas J. Sargent, William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business, New York University and Christopher A. Sims,Harold B. Helms Professor of Economics and Banking at Princeton University, “for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy”.
Considering the financial troughs and valleys of the last decade one would be justified in thinking economics to be a “black art” rather than a science. Economists blame greedy bankers and profligate and irresponsible governments (read politicians) while the bankers and speculators blame the inaccurate and arrogant economists and their flawed models. Alan Greenspan was a darling of the right and is now seen as being one of the key individuals responsible for the sub-prime fiasco. Paul Krugman, a noted critic of George Bush, won the Nobel prize in 2008 for his work (or perhaps his obsession) with international trade. Yet his solutions for the sub-prime crisis seem simplistic, have been heavily criticised and don’t seem to work.
There is a school of thought that Economics should never have been elevated to the status of the Nobel prize. It is not one of the Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, but is commonly identified with them. Officially it is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobeland was first awarded in 1969.
“have decidedly advised against it” …. primarily because “the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. .. This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.”
Håkan Juholt, the relatively new leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, is in deep trouble.
He became leader of the party following an old fashioned “coup” in March this year – reminiscent of a Soviet style of leadership change which did not bode well for the “renewal” of the party.
Håkan Juholt: FOTO SCANPIX via SvD
It now seems that back in 2007 he moved into his girl-friend’s apartment in Stockholm and since then has been claiming the entire rental of the apartment as his “temporary” residence in the capital. Apparently he should not have been claiming more than half the rental. (By the rules, if he had evicted his girl-friend and was the sole occupant he would have been perfectly entitled to his claim!).
In any event his exaggerated claims have totalled some 160,000 kronor (about $23,000) that he was not entitled to. Yesterday he called a press conference and apologised excusing his behaviour on “not being aware of the rules”. He paid back the money yesterday. His acknowledgement of his “ignorance of the rules” is being received with some incredulity since an “internal audit” within the Social Democrats had apparently identified the problem back in 2009. The Parliamentary Finance Office pointed out the non-compliance a month ago when Juholt applied for an increase in his compensation because the rent had increased. That he kept silent for a month and only decided to apologise and pay the money back after the Aftonbladet newspaper had revealed the scandal has not added to his crediblity.
The extra payment he claimed has amounted to about 3,500 kronor per month and considering that his monthly salary is 144,000 kronor (about $21,000), the impression he has created is one of a greedy little man looking for every kronor he can squeeze out of the system.
Of course he is not the first – and is certainly not the last – Swedish politician caught with his hand in the till. Many have distinguished themselves by jumping housing queues and “purchasing” rental accommodation with very lucrative results. Swedish politicians are also known – both at the national and at the local level – for blatantly arranging the rules to ensure their financial well-being even after they have left office. Their defence thereafter has always been that they are “just following the rules” but they don’t usually mention that they made the rules themselves.
Swedish politicians like most of their European counterparts are extremely moralistic about the behaviour of others but are remarkably hypocritical when it comes to their own behaviour. Their own sense of ethics leaves a lot to be desired.
The season’s first winter storm walloped northern Sweden on Thursday night, dumping more than 10 centimetres of thick, wet snow, snarling traffic, and prompting warnings from police.
Between Sorsele och Arvidsjaur in Norrbotten Thursday night: image Aftonbladet
Kiruna on Friday morning: image Aftonbladet
“This is full-blown winter. I’ve been stuck for two-and-a-half hours,” truck driver Peter Härdfeldt told the Aftonbladet newspaper. A low pressure system moving across Sweden left parts of the far north covered in white on Friday morning following a night of gusty winds and wet snow.
Police in Norbotten urged drivers who had yet to change to winter tyres to “do so as quickly as possible” adding that “the snowploughs are on their way”. ….. On Saturday night, frost and below-freezing temperatures are expected to put a chill across much of the country. “It’s going to be one of the coldest nights this weekend,” meteorologist Lovisa Andersson from SMHI told Expressen.
The Nobel prize for Chemistry 2011 has been awarded to Prof. Dan Shechtman, Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion for the discovery of quasi-crystals.
Dan Schechtman
Daniel Shechtman, Israeli citizen. Born 1941 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Ph.D. 1972 from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. Distinguished Professor, The Philip Tobias Chair, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Daniel Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.
On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Daniel Shechtman’s electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal.
Shechtman’s image, however, showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons, when a sphere needs both five- and six-cornered polygons. His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.
Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level. In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular – they follow mathematical rules – but they never repeat themselves.
Atomic model of an Ag-Al quasicrystal: Wikipedia
When scientists describe Shechtman’s quasicrystals, they use a concept that comes from mathematics and art: the golden ratio. This number had already caught the interest of mathematicians in Ancient Greece, as it often appeared in geometry. In quasicrystals, for instance, the ratio of various distances between atoms is related to the golden mean.
Following Shechtman’s discovery, scientists have produced other kinds of quasicrystals in the lab and discovered naturally occurring quasicrystals in mineral samples from a Russian river. A Swedish company has also found quasicrystals in a certain form of steel, where the crystals reinforce the material like armor. Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in different products such as frying pans and diesel engines.
Chemistry Nobel: 102 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have been awarded since 1901. It was not awarded on eight occasions: in 1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, 1941 and 1942.Of 160 Laureates Frederick Sanger was awarded twice and there are 159 individuals (but including only 4 women) who have received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. All previous winners of the Chemistry Nobel are here.Chemistry was the most important science for Alfred Nobel’s own work. The development of his inventions as well as the industrial processes he employed were based upon chemical knowledge. Chemistry was the second prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will.
In 1901 the very first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jacobus H. van ‘t Hoff for his work on rates of reaction, chemical equilibrium, and osmotic pressure. In more recent years, the Chemistry Laureates have increased our understanding of chemical processes and their molecular basis, and have also contributed to many of the technological advancements we enjoy today.
Staffan Normark has just announced that the Physics Nobel has been awarded half to Prof. Saul Perlmutter and half to Prof. Brian P Schmidt and Prof. Adam G Riess for work on the universe and supernovae. They discovered separately that the expansion of the universe was accelerating and not slowing down.
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice…”* What will be the final destiny of the Universe? Probably it will end in ice, if we are to believe this year’s Nobel Laureates in Physics. They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Laureates themselves.
In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role. ….. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected – this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.
…. For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.
The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma – perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.
None of the winners were among the Thomson Reuters predictions.
Yesterday the party atmosphere for what was to be a week of celebrations at the Nobel Foundation was converted into a confused round of frantic phone calls and emergency meetings when it became known that the medicine prize winner Ralph Steinman had died last Friday. The media have been full of stories about the embarrassment this has caused and the chaos that ensued. Nevertheless the Foundation came to the decision – fairly quickly and quite rightly in my opinion – that Steinman would retain the award.
But it does create a minor quandary for the Nobel Awards Committee. In future they will have to check that their award winners are alive at the time of making their decisions, but they will still have to maintain secrecy about the identity of the winners. Indirect checking through 3rd parties could probably lead to some identity leaks.
But I think this is a storm in a Nobel tea-cup. The solution is fairly simple as probability comes to their aid. Such occurrences as Ralph Steinman’s death some hours before the decision was finally taken are likely to be extremely rare. And they handled the unprecedented situation swiftly and quite well. Moreover the Nobel Foundation could quite easily and simply clarify their award rules to be “that individuals known to have died before the decision shall not be considered”. The critical time is, I think, when the decision is made and not the time of the award announcement.
The k2p blog 