Does GM Have A Real Buyer For Saturn? (GM)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 15, 11:45AM EDT

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General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) may have an answer as to what could happen with that Saturn unit. Just be sure you stress the “may” in this thought. A press release came out mid-day noting that an investor group “emerges to acquire Saturn.” There may be more caveats and questions than there are answers, so for now we are only considering this as hearsay. The group includes private equity firm Black Oak Partners, LLC. This group is unknown to us. Here is a link to the full press release.

Black Oak Partners is said to be working with a number of Saturn retailers and announced that it has approached General Motors about acquiring and operating the principal assets of Saturn Distribution Corporation (SDC) as a diversified automobile distributor and retailer. SDC is the legal entity that franchises Saturn retailers today.

This release notes that a “new” Saturn Distribution Corporation is envisioned as a unique model for new car retailing in the United States which will leverage Saturn’s brand and source products from OEMs for distribution through Saturn’s existing network of approximately 440 US and Canadian retailers.

The new SDC will become a model of lean-distribution that leverages unique Saturn equities, like “market area approach”. It also notes that the nSDC will initially source vehicles from GM, but expects over time to offer smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles from a range of manufacturers. It would retain a light vehicle design function that will help other manufacturers, but this notes that nSDC will not directly engage in manufacturing activities.

A call has been put in for the relations firm here, but so far no answers are really there as to how this would play out. It may be something, and it may be nothing. Until we have some definitive data, we are considering this as hearsay.

GM shares are still up 5% today at $1.87, but there has not really been any movement since this release came out. Apparently, we are not the only ones that have more questions than answers in this matter.

Jon C. Ogg

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.