American icon, Ford Motor Company, not only escapes the government review of their books by being the lone of the “big three” to say “pass” on the bailout money… but may also come out the big winner.
I’d like to think their advertising in the past years have had something to do with their better-than-fragile status. Their commercial last year conveyed the national pride that that I’d like to believe may just hike them up by their bootstraps to their previous stature in history. If you didn’t see it then, it is worthy of a repeat.
The company had the option to say “no thank you” to the bailout after leveraging it’s assets back in 2006 to raise $24.6 billion.
At the same time, the Dearborn, Mich., car company is likely to benefit from many of the concessions that General Motors and Chrysler exact from the suppliers, unions, dealers and debt holders shared by all three companies.
“The clear winner in this game is Ford,” Kimberly Rodriguez, a principal at Grant Thornton consulting firm and an adviser to Ford senior management, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Friday.
The Bush administration said it would provide a total of $17.4 billion in loans for GM and Chrysler. As part of the bailout, GM and Chrysler will have to open their books to the government and meet restructuring targets such as reducing their debt and hammering out deals with the United Auto Workers to cut labor costs.
Ford still is seeking a $9 billion line of credit from the government, though it adds it may not need to tap it. In addition, Ford wants $5 billion from the Energy Department program.
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.