Union-run trust seeks Chrysler stock sale

breitbart.com ^ | 1/9/13 | ap

[ColdOne]

A trust fund that pays medical bills for Chrysler blue-collar retirees has asked the company to set up a public sale of Chrysler stock.

The United Auto Workers trust, which owns 41.5 percent of Chrysler's shares, on Wednesday asked Chrysler to start the process for an initial public stock offering. The trust wants the company to sell 16.6 percent of the stock owned by the trust, Chrysler said.

Italian carmaker Fiat SpA, which owns the remaining 58.5 percent of Chrysler, is fighting the trust in a Delaware court over the value of Chrysler shares

[Jonty30]

That doesn’t indicate much confidence in the company, if you’re selling your shares.

[Moltke]

Chrysler shares have a non-zero value? OK, whatever.

WTH was FIAT hoping to gain in a joint venture with Chrysler after Daimler lost billions failing at the same thing?

Were these idiot CEOs willfully ignorant of the destructiveness of auto worker unions?

[TexGuy]

From a very top-level reading, evidently the trust needs more money to pay medical bills for an ever growing number of retirees. The trust is limited in the amount of money it has and the access to stock. The medical bills will go up, the number of retirees will go up and now that they have basically taken over the company, they want more money than the stock assets are worth. ... Even this trust recognizes a problem and their reaction is to demand more money!? Will these people ever learn? If something is unsustainable, it is unsustainable. ... They are going to need the President to confiscate some dollars for them.

[taildragger]

"Sergio Marchionne, who is CEO of both Fiat and Chrysler, has said that Fiat's planned investment in Italy to boost production means the company does not have the cash to buy the trust's shares outright:,"

I have a gnome in the organization this blurb above was mentioned. Fiat is in a bit of a pickel wanting to expand and not wanting to go public if you will with any stock.

Yet it is this Stock that they want to cash from to put in their "VEBA" ( Voluntary Employee Benefit Trust). Note GM and Ford have theirs. Ford gave the Ford UAW shares in place of cash and the UAW exercised the Warrants at about $9 a share a while back and they made a killin' but Ford now owes the UAW zero zip nada for UAW Retiree health care Benefits that liability is off their Books!!!.

GM and Chrysler? Not so much....

[GWynand]

The Unions used to be all excited about profit sharing...loss sharing, not so much.