Saab is in deep trouble according to its owners Spyker. The Swedish car manufacturer could seriously bite the dust even after the takeover by Spyker early last year. In fact, Spyker had to let go of a major shareholding of its luxury car manufacturing arm to a UK based investment company to inject some extra capital into Saab but even this little maneuver has not stopped the bleeding. Spyker's annual report had stated that Saab's future isn't certain if they do not secure new funding. I think Saab has caused the owners of Spyker to lose out big time. It had to sell off major shares in Spyker cars and now it reveals that Saab is bleeding badly.

This statement is surprising as I remember writing about the Spyker-Saab deal in February 2010 where Spyker bought the beleaguered company from General Motors for a sum totaling US$74 million in cash and another US$326 million in deferred shares. Spyker took a 400 million Euro loan for Saab and another hundred million Euro loan elsewhere as backup. 400 million Euros is just part of the operating costs of Saab. Of course at that point of time Spyker wanted Saab to sell 120,000 cars per year and the bad news is Saab only managed around 80,000 or so units. It sold more cars in 2009 and obviously, selling less cars meant that Saab is in a real bad state. There was even an issue at the Saab Trollhattan plant which had to be temporarily shut down for about a day or so due to suppliers stopping the supply of parts. All of this isn't confidence building if you know what I mean.

According to the annual report, Saab is losing tons of money due to trying to set up new distribution networks and sales/marketing operations. While this spending of money was necessary and budgeted for in the Saab turnaround cum business plan, Spyker did not anticipate that the actual cash needed was higher than planned. There was also talk that a Russian billionaire is interested in Saab and is willing to invest 500million Euros into Saab. But this is mere speculation and nothing is solid as yet. And why someone is willing to add more money to a sinking ship is beyond me. As if Spyker's foray into Saab isn't a lesson to others already.

All this has basically shown that what I said in my earlier article written way, way, way back in December 2009 where I asked a simple question on Saab and its extinction at that point of time and whether it really matter to any of us?

I basically asked and said -