Ford offers $78 million for Romanian firm
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – US giant Ford Motor Company has offered to pay -57 million ($78 million) for the Romanian government’s majority stake in troubled car-maker Automobile Craiova SA, officials said on Friday. The centrist government bought back the Craiova-based car-maker from its bankrupt owner, Daewoo Motor, in late 2006 for $51 million and paid another $10 million for debts by the Korean company. In July, Ford submitted the only bid in a tender for a 72.4-percent stake in a sale that the Romanian government had said it hoped to wrap up by September 1. «The offer of Ford Motor Company for a 72.4-percent stake is -4.1556 per share or -57 million overall,» Sebastian Vladescu, head of Romania’s privatization agency AVAS, told reporters after opening an improved offer by Ford. Vladescu, who said Ford’s initial offer for the plant was worth -55 million, expects the deal to be signed next week. «We still have a lot of work to do, it will be a long and complicated weekend.» Government sources, quoted by local media, have said an agreement on the sale might be signed in Frankfurt on Wednesday during the international motor show. The US car-maker said it plans to invest -675 million in the Craiova-based plant which produced 24,000 Daewoo vehicles in 2006.
