Friday, December 19, 2008

Wall Street Journal's Auto Bailout factsheet

http://blogs.wsj.com/autoshow/2008/12/19/autos-bailout-fact-sheet/

Here's what the Automakers MUST do:
Binding Terms and Conditions: The binding terms and conditions established by the Treasury will mirror those that were voted favorably by a majority of both Houses of Congress, including:
Firms must provide warrants for non-voting stock.
Firms must accept limits on executive compensation and eliminate perks such as corporate jets.
Debt owed to the government would be senior to other debts, to the extent permitted by law.
Firms must allow the government to examine their books and records.
Firms must report and the government has the power to block any large transactions (> $100 M).
Firms must comply with applicable Federal fuel efficiency and emissions requirements.
Firms must not issue new dividends while they owe government debt.

Here are the "targets" (read: stuff that sounds like a good idea, but the UAW wouldn't agree to it in the Senate version of the bailout, so you don't have to do it if you don't feel like it as long as you can come up with a good excuse, but we're trying to not look like total sell outs, so we're putting it into the verbiage):

Targets: The terms and conditions established by Treasury will include additional targets that were the subject of Congressional negotiations but did not come to a vote, including:
Reduce debts by 2/3 via a debt for equity exchange.
Make one-half of VEBA payments in the form of stock.
Eliminate the jobs bank.
Work rules that are competitive with transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.
Wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.
These terms and conditions would be non-binding in the sense that negotiations can deviate from the quantitative targets above, providing that the firm reports the reasons for these deviations and makes the business case to achieve long-term viability in spite of the deviations.

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