FOXBusiness: Two of the most iconic names in American industry reportedly in talks about a possible merger

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...tory/Business/

Quote: General Motors is in preliminary talks about a possible merger with Chrysler LLC, The New York Times reported late on Friday.

The talks between GM and Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler, began more than a month ago and are not certain to produce a deal, the paper said.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night that the merger talks had been suspended because of financial market turmoil.

A merger between the two auto giants would drastically change the landscape of the automobile industry in the United States.
General Motors

The Globe and Mail

The news comes after GM lost 31 per cent of its value Thursday, in a day of market turmoil that saw the Dow Jones close below 9,000 points.

The Times said two people close to the process said the chances of a merger were ”50-50” as of Friday and would most likely still take weeks to work out.

A merger would drastically reshape the ailing U.S. auto industry, reducing the Big Three of Detroit to the Big Two.

GM shares have fallen to near a 60-year low on fears the global financial crisis could derail turnaround plans.

GM and Detroit's other automaker, Ford Motor Co both ruled out on Friday seeking bankruptcy protection.

GM shares fell as low as $4 early on Friday, the lowest price for the stock since 1949, but recovered and ended up 13 cents, or 2.7 per cent higher, at $4.89 on the New York Stock Exchange.

I don't care for either company, particularly Chrysler, but I certainly don't want either of them to go bankrupt.

What do you think?

Struggling US car giants General Motors and Chrysler are in talks about a possible merger, US media say.

Struggling US car giants General Motors and Chrysler are in talks about a possible merger, US media say.

FOXBusiness: Two of the most iconic names in American industry reportedly in talks about a possible merger

DETROIT/NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Motors has had talks with smaller rival Chrysler LLC about a merger that would combine the No. 1 and No. 3 American automakers at a time when both are struggling to cut costs and shore up cash, according to a source briefed on the matter. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ZnVAigYNV0DZnme5kKaAYotmG6E/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ZnVAigYNV0DZnme5kKaAYotmG6E/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=lsUxWrWN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=G4sNwEqJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=G4sNwEqJ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=2l4JK3ea"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=2l4JK3ea" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/DAqtqkKXdLw" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/etc/" rel="tag"Etc./a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hirings-firings/" rel="tag"Hirings/Firings/Layoffs/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/plants-manufacturing/" rel="tag"Plants/Manufacturing/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/chrysler/" rel="tag"Chrysler, LLC./a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/gm/" rel="tag"GM/a/pa href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11auto.html?_r=2amp;hp=amp;adxnnl=1amp;oref=sloginamp;adxnnlx=1223694027-9Ad8JFNvFoIR+MP7stoEhA"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mushroom-cloud_gm_chrysler_450.jpg" //abr /br /Our heads are still reeling from one of the most tumultuous financial weeks on record, and the auto industry was far from immune. But despite our best efforts to drown our concerns in Racer5 IPA, the hits keep coming, and this time it's courtesy of the emNew York Times/em.br /br /The Gray Lady is reporting that General Motors and Chrysler have been in talks about a possible merger for the past month, that "negotiations are not certain to produce a deal," "would most likely still take weeks to work out" (obfuscate much?) and that two unnamed sources say that the chances of the merger going through are "50-50."br /br /With GM's stock prices ending the week below $5 a share and Cerberus - the private equity firm that owns Chrysler - grasping at the flimsiest of straws, including continued talks with Nissan/Renault, a merger of emun/emequals is two parts disturbing and one part intriguing.br /br /Cerberus' people haven't been returning phone calls and the only comment offered to the emNYT/em from the General's spokesperson, Tony Cervone, was, "Without referencing that specific rumor, as we've often said at GM officials routinely discuss issues of mutual interest with other automakers." Broad, unclear and exactly what we'd expect.br /br /The merger of GM and Chrysler would put Cerberus in charge of an "unspecified equity stake" in the GM/Chrysler corporation, making the two-headed General-Chrysler the world's largest automaker, controlling over 35 percent of the U.S. vehicle market, causing rifts among brand faithful and offering more potential (vehicle) cannibalization than the Donner Party. Not to mention both automakers' labor contracts, supplier dealers and slipping market share. Shocked? Don't be. We give it a snowball's chance on the Sun.br /br /emThanks to ALL who tipped in./embr /br /[Source: a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11auto.html?_r=2amp;hp=amp;adxnnl=1amp;oref=sloginamp;adxnnlx=1223694027-9Ad8JFNvFoIR+MP7stoEhA"NYT/a]h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11auto.html?_r=2amp;hp=amp;adxnnl=1amp;oref=sloginamp;adxnnlx=1223694027-9Ad8JFNvFoIR+MP7stoEhARead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/10/breaking-gm-and-chrysler-in-merger-talks/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1339230/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/10/breaking-gm-and-chrysler-in-merger-talks/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~a/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=LM0ioP"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~a/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=LM0ioP" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=shzKm"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=shzKm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=QSHPm"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=QSHPm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/417437421" height="1" width="1"/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - General Motors is in preliminary talks about a possible merger with fellow U.S. automaker Chrysler, The New York Times reported late on Friday. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/BZ98Q92h4Vz46Ca_x8AwmexH-mc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/BZ98Q92h4Vz46Ca_x8AwmexH-mc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=wR3k56dU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=twVUlE8v"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=twVUlE8v" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=Hc2Vw8gv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=Hc2Vw8gv" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/yZQKLqBSa5Y" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4840324814b9b9400026962bmaxX=372maxY=226" border="0" alt="bewkespauliewalnuts.jpg" title="bewkespauliewalnuts.jpg" width="372" height="226" /Whole thing now worth less than one-quarter of what AOL alone was worth before the merger./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nsUnbGIJ5v_eJFXlt3L5HnfHUDE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nsUnbGIJ5v_eJFXlt3L5HnfHUDE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=e2Ti3CLE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=e2Ti3CLE" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=zUawIe5g"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=zSFp2mLh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=siGr121w"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=siGr121w" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=IA2WsljS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=G8SBuAQc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=evSpDMFt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=WTieIQip"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/KWtGoWT3-WU" height="1" width="1"/

img alt="Mike Morhaime - Diablo 3 Console Port Possible - Image 1" title="Mike Morhaime - Diablo 3 Console Port Possible - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/124797/diablo-3-2.jpg?093753" style="cursor: pointer; margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" align="right" border="0"TGS may be exciting, but let's not forget that another gaming convention is taking place: a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/blizzcon/13026" id="tag" title="a 2005 convention held by Blizzard Entertainment at the Anaheim Convention Center to celebrate their major franchises"Blizzcon/a!brbrThis piece of news comes from a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/blizzard/76" id="tag" title="Father of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo Series"Blizzard/a president Mike Mohaime, who teases span style="font-style: italic;"Diablo /spanfans by saying that the third game might see a landing on consoles.brbrp style="padding-left: 40px; padding-right: 40px;" Every game we have the discussion about which platforms make the most sense. As span style="font-style: italic;"Diablo 3/span takes shape, I think we'll do an evaluation./pbrp style="padding-left: 40px; padding-right: 40px;"I think there is a pretty good argument to be made that that type of game might work very well on consoles. There might be some technical limitations though that we might need to get past./pbrHis words echo a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/rob-pardo/5601" id="tag" title="WoW lead designer"Rob Pardo/a's who a title="Rob Pardo: Console-friendly Diablo 3 quot;theoretically possiblequot;" href="http://pc.qj.net/Rob-Pardo-Console-friendly-Diablo-3-theoretically-possible-/pg/49/aid/121847"remarked earlier this year/a that span style="font-style: italic;"a title="Diablo 3" href="http://pc.qj.net/Diablo-3/cid/2878"Diablo III/a /spanon the consoles is "theoretically possible," since it's the "most console friendly" of Blizzard's major franchises. Hopefully, Blizzard's a title="Activision, Vivendi Games to merge into Activision Blizzard" href="http://www.qj.net/Activision-Vivendi-Games-to-merge-into-Activision-Blizzard/pg/49/aid/108854"recent merger with Activision/a will make this more than possible.brbr pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/qj/ps3?a=UwpqD6"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/qj/ps3?i=UwpqD6" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/qj/ps3/~4/417182060" height="1" width="1"/

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Citigroup has said it was ending court efforts to block a merger of banking rivals Wachovia and Wells Fargo, but vowed to press its claim for breach of contract damages.

pA bit hard to stay focused and keep writing about media, considering the scope of other things happening around. Anyway, in our own industry, even aa href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-ubs-lowers-q3-estimates-for-online-ad-revenues-offline-still-looks-wors/" title="s analysts downgrade"s analysts downgrade/a online ad revenues ahead of Q3 earnings period, Yahoo was down to below $13, the first time in more than five years. This is the lowest since the summer of 2003, when it was deep in the first post-bubble recession. It closes today down more than 8 percent to $12.65. The company reports its Q308 earnings on Oct 21, and analysts are expecting quarterly profits and sales to fall short of consensus estimates, due to the weakening display ad market. All kinds of rumors are surfacing now, including some major layoffs, serious merger talks between Yahoo and AOL, and other more wilder ones. And of course the Google-Yahoo (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=YHOO" class="ticker" title="YHOO"NSDQ: YHOO/a) ad partnership may be stuck in regulatory issues for a while now.... /p p Then in the general media sector, Marketwatch has a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={167F6140-15C9-42BB-9B37-2907941C9EEF}siteid=nbih" title="a good roundup"a good roundup/a: Time Warner hit a five-year low of $9.94 before closing at $10.09, down 6.4 percent. News Corp. dropped 10 percent to close at its five year low, at $9.01. Viacom also gave up 5.7 percent to close at a five-year bottom of $20.08. /p p Also, there are deeping concerns about the advertising-heavy CBS, and its shares are at their worst level in 10 years. Earlier this morning, Soleil analyst Laura Martin downgraded CBS to "Hold" from "Buy" and slashed its 12-month price target to $12 from $30. /p piCheck out the best business jobs in digital media. a href="http://jobs.paidcontent.org/"Go here/a for paidContent.org Job Board./i/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=MiC5no"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=MiC5no" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=5dlKM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=5dlKM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=cT4VM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=cT4VM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=mV68m"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=mV68m" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=5alMM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=5alMM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=fjGEM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=fjGEM" border="0"/img/a /div

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Citigroup said Thursday it was ending court efforts to block a merger of banking rivals Wachovia and Wells Fargo, but vowed to press its claim for breach of contract damages.

pSuddenly the world is racing to find ways to create cheap, clean energy. A study of the Internetrsquo;s long development since 1946, arguably when modern computing began, offers valuable lessons that can help keep energy innovations on course for a comparable 62 years:/ppHardening of the Categories. In the early days of the Internet there were computers, monopolized by IBM, and there was communications, monopolized by ATamp;T. The U.S. Department of Justice regulated IBM, and the Federal Communications Commission regulated ATamp;T. Officials in Washington, D.C., actually had years of hearings to decide which agency was in charge of which: computers versus communications. That turned out to be a silly hardening of the categories; the Internet soon became a merger of computing and communications, not one or the other./p a href=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=using-the-internets-history-to-develop[More]/a

pimg src="http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/20579/tecmokoei.jpg" align="left" hspace="5"/As part of its new merger with Tecmo, Koei is investigating the possibility of expanding its Dynasty Warriors series in Western markets, says Koei president Kenji Matsubara. "I cannot speak in detail right now, but please wait and see. Now we are working on what you mentioned," Matsubara says, speaking to Gamasutra at the Tokyo Game Show. Koei has previously pursued a relationship with Namco Bandai in the development of Dynasty Warriors Gundam, based on .../pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=Ng97M"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=Ng97M" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=BgdYM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=BgdYM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=xMxCM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=xMxCM" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamasutraNews/~4/415737913" height="1" width="1"/