Asian electric car consortium saves Saab from bankruptcy
BANKRUPT Swedish car manufacturer Saab has found a buyer, its administrators said yesterday, with a Chinese-Swedish group named as the investor.
Saab, which has manufactured iconic cars such as the 900 and 9-3 since 1947, crashed into bankruptcy late in 2011, just under two years after former owner General Motors sold it to Dutch group Spyker.
Saab has debts of around 13bn Swedish crowns (£1.2bn), 2.2bn of which is owed to the Swedish debt office. The bankruptcy administrators have been searching for a buyer since then.
In a statement, the administrator announced the buyer as National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), whose chief executive is Kai Johan Jiang, a Chinese businessman with Swedish citizenship. It gave no details on how much the buyer was paying for Saab or how much it would invest. NEVS is owned by National Modern Energy Holdings, which has 51 per cent, and Sun Investment, with 49 per cent.
The administrators said “the company will start a new operation where all development and production will be focused on electric cars”.