Fritz Henderson has resigned from his role as chief executive of General Motors -
GM's chairman of the board, Ed Whitacre Jr, will serve as an interim replacement.  Whitacre is understood to want to ramp up the pace of change at GM. A former telecoms executive, he was brought in as GM's chairman in June by the Obama administration, and admitted at the time: "I don't know anything about cars".  The unexpected news of Henderson's departure, "by mutual consent", came minutes after the end of a GM board meeting to discuss the fate of its Swedish car brand Saab.  GM said that due to the emergence of new potential buyers it would evaluate bids for carmaker Saab by the end of December.  GM said that if it did not find a "suitable arrangement" it would then "wind down" Saab.  About 4,500 jobs at Saab are at stake.
New chief executive - Whitacre commended what he described as Henderson's "remarkable job in leading the company through an unprecedented period of challenge and change".  "While momentum has been building over the past several months, all involved agree that changes needed to be made," the statement continued.  The White House denied any involvement in the resignation.  "This decision was made by the Board of Directors alone. The administration was not involved in the decision," a White House spokeswoman said.  In March, Henderson replaced the then chief executive, Rick Wagoner, who was ordered to step down by US President Barack Obama.  Wagoner had headed the company since 2000, after first joining the company in 1977.  (Am Online, Wednesday 2nd December)

Dutch sports car maker in Saab talks - Spyker, the Netherlands-based producer of premium sports cars, said it was talking to General Motors about buying its Saab premium brand together with Convers Group, its biggest shareholder.  Saab said yesterday that it was still talking to "a number of parties" after GM on Tuesday said that it would wind down the 60-year-old brand next year if it failed to find a suitable buyer by the end of this month.
A bid led by Sweden's Koenigsegg Automotive collapsed last week.  Spyker, like Koenigsegg, makes high-end, hand-built premium sports cars in very small numbers. Last month, the company said that it was moving its production from Zeewolde in the Netherlands to Coventry in the UK. 
Like Saab, the company historically built aircraft as well as cars.  Industry analysts yesterday expressed scepticism about Spyker's bid, given the potentially awkward fit of a top-end niche producer with a high-volume, lossmaking carmaker like Saab.  "They make very high-end, very quirky cars, and sell them mainly in the US," said Chas Hallett, editor of Britain's Autocar magazine. "Their ability to move into mass production and global brand management would be very slim - but it would be the same situation if Koenigsegg had bought them." 
US investor Ira Rennert's Renco Group also expressed preliminary interest in buying Saab last year, along with a group of US investors from the US state of Wyoming, led by Merbanco, the merchant bank. However, there was no sign yesterday of this interest being given a new lease of life.  "Tonight we were disappointed to learn that the Merbanco consortium would not be invited to continue its efforts to acquire Saab," Christopher Johnson, Merbanco's chief executive, said in a statement.
Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co, the Chinese carmaker, has approached Saab's management about acquiring production equipment to make its 9-5 model in China. However, GM is said to be cautious about doing a deal with a competitor in the fast-growing Chinese market, and a person close to the deal said that sale was "uncertain".
Sweden's government yesterday reaffirmed its willingness to offer loan guarantees to help poten-tial owners keep Saab afloat, provided manufacturing remained in the country. The company employs 3,400 people at its sole assembly plant in Trollhättan, south-west Sweden, and thousands more have jobs that depend on the brand. 
"If we're to go in with the taxpayer's money, then the production must be kept in Sweden, and also create jobs in Sweden," Maud Olofsson, minister for enterprise and energy, told Swedish radio.
Any new bidder would need a guarantee from the Swedish government to unlock a €400m ($602m) loan to Saab recently approved by the European Investment Bank.
Labour groups welcomed GM's decision to spare Saab from immediate liquidation. "It has given us renewed hope," said Anette Hellgren, leader of the white-collar union at Trollhättan.  (FT online, Thursday 3rd December)

Jaguar Land Rover back in the black - In the face of the government's attempts to hijack Jaguar Land Rover in exchange for financial backing to get through the current economic mess that is afflicting car makers, JLR hasn’t given in to whatever the demands were and has instead ploughed its own furrow to build financing for the future. With a large chunk of funds raised from private financing (including a deal to finance Jaguar Land Rover from production to delivery). Which in itself is a show of faith in the future Tata is mapping out for Jaguar Land Rover.
It now seems that those plans are starting to bear fruit with the report that JLR are back in profit for the last quarter. Cost cutting measures throughout the group coupled with some great product and clever marketing all aligned to show a profit of £2.8 million in the last quarter.
No doubt the cost cutting has helped, but the new XF is a really strong product and selling well, and the 2010 models of the Discovery, Range Rover and Freelander are a good buy. But if JLR can manage this sort of profit in what is still a depressed market - things really are looking bright. (Autoindustry.com, Wednesday 2nd December)

The rich are back buying Bentleys, Rembrandts and pink diamonds - The week in which it emerged that Britain is the last big world economy to be stuck in recession is not, on the face of it, the best time to announce that you are about to go into production with a luxury car costing £220,000.
But that is exactly what Bentley did yesterday, telling the world that it is going to start making the Mulsanne next spring at the company’s headquarters in Crewe, with deliveries to customers starting in the summer.
And it expects people to buy it. “The initial demand is very strong,” said Stuart McCullough, Bentley’s board member for sales and marketing. “The rate at which orders are building leads us to believe that by February it will be sold all the way to 2011.”
In other words, the recession may be V-shaped or W-shaped, almost over or still going strong, but the super-rich are still, well, very rich; and for many of them, the economic downturn has turned out to be far less of a calamity than some feared.
Demand may be down on a couple of years ago, but it is picking up again.
“People have been cautious about spending very large sums of money on a visible thing like a car,” Mr McCullough said. “But that is easing now that people are starting to see what the outlook for the next 18 months is like.” (The Times, Thursday 3rd December)