Bloomberg’s Doron Levin gets off a nice one-liner at Kirk Kerkorian today, and his bid for Chrysler – which, as you’ll recall, is contingent on the United Auto Workers taking on a huge chunk of Chrysler’s liabilities and risk. The bid, he says,
is a bit like proposing a manned mission to Pluto, subject to the invention of a spaceship that can traverse the solar system.
Certainly the noises coming out of Frankfurt and Detroit are unlikely to bolster Kerkorian’s spirits. Dana Cimilluca points us to an article by Tim Higgins in the Detroit Free Press, saying that both DaimlerChrysler and its unions can’t stand the idea of selling to Kerkorian:
Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove said he opposes the Tracinda offer.
“I am not interested in Kerkorian’s style. His whole history has been to make money by taking advantage of throwing a lot of people out of work,” Hargrove said. “He’s the guy I am totally opposed to.”
Of course, the Canadian Auto Workers aren’t going to be particularly influential in this deal, but with Frankfurt analysts saying that Kerkorian “is the last person on Earth [DaimlerChrysler] would be willing to sit down and negotiate with,” and Kerkorian being kept out of meetings between DaimlerChrysler and its bidders this week, the odds of Kerkorian winning this battle would seem to be slim-to-nonexistent.