Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
Berlin - Troubled German carmaker Opel is threatening to close three of its plants in Europe and sack 11 000 people, one fifth of its workforce, as it seeks billions of euros in state aid, reports said on Saturday.
According to the weekly Der Spiegel to be published on Monday a plan submitted to government officials Friday calls for the closure of factories at Bochum in western Germany, Eisenach in the east and Antwerp in northern Belgium.
The aim is to save some $1.2bn in staff costs, Der Spiegel said. An alternative proposal would be to cut only 3 500 jobs but lower wages across the board, it added.
Another weekly Focus said Opel, a subsidiary of ailing US giant General Motors, was demanding €4bn in state aid, not the €3.3bn reported earlier, though some could be in the form of guarantees or credits.
A company spokesperson said Friday that talks on a rescue package could last weeks, after directors from Opel and its US parent General Motors met German officials at Chancellor Angela Merkel's office in Berlin.
German officials are concerned that Opel's strong dependence on GM would lead to state aid effectively being transferred to the United States.
Focus noted that Opel had never paid a single cent in taxes to the German state, as any profits it made were transferred to Detroit.
In her weekly video address, meanwhile, Merkel said that Opel's proposals needed "improvement".
- AFP