Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska has acquired a stake of a few percent in U.S. carmaker General Motors Corp and aims to build it up to at least 10 percent, Germany’s Manager Magazin quoted by Reuters reported on Thursday without citing a source.
General Motors and Deripaska could not be reached immediately for comment.
Deripaska, Russia’s sixth-richest man, has just engineered a deal that merged his RUSAL company with Russian rival SUAL into the world’s leading aluminium company.
“Now he has received a mandate from the Kremlin to develop the international competitiveness of the Russian automotive industry,” the magazine said in an advance summary of a report to be published on Friday.
“Deripaska already has a majority of Russian vehicle builder Gas via his holding company Basis Element and appears to be aiming for cooperation with GM in order to gain access to the Asian market among other things,” it said.
GM, the world’s biggest carmaker by volume, this month failed to strike a deal on forming a three-way alliance with France’s Renault and Japan’s Nissan Motor Co Ltd.
GM shares traded in Frankfurt rose 1.7 percent to 26.15 euros by 0841 GMT.
The cost of insuring against a default by General Motors edged lower in the credit derivatives market on the report, a trader in London said.
Five-year credit default swaps on GM fell 10 basis points to 510 basis points, the trader said, meaning it costs 510,000 euros a year to insure 10 million euros of the carmaker’s debt against default.
豫公网安备41010502003434号