For some reason, GM Europe performed much worse than Ford Europe:
-GM Europe's financials: -
2008 operating loss: 2.8 bn $
2007 operating loss: 0.5 bn $
(before "corporate&others, i.e. no coporate overhead allocated)
Adjusted for "special items":
2008 operating loss: 1.6 bn $
2007 operating profit: 55 m $
"Special items" are all sorts of negative stuff which - according to management - occurred outside the normal course of business, and therefore should be excluded. Of course there are always special items in every year, and they are always negative...
Note that the losses of all GM divisions together add up to only 10 bn $ in 2008, whereas GM as a whole lost 31 bn $. So 21 bn $ aren't the responsibility of any division, they just happened to occur for "special reasons" or are corporate overhead.
- Ford Europe's financials: -
2008 operating profit: 1.0 bn $
2007 operating profit: 0.7 bn $
(However, Ford figures exclude Volvo, which lost 1.7 bn $ in 2008, and 2.7 bn $ in 2007. If Volvo is included, GM Europe and Ford Europe don't look too different.)
Posts
Links 5/7/2022
vor 2 Jahren
Offline reader comment: What about transfer pricing, though?
AntwortenLöschenAnswer: Yes, that sort of stuff might distort the numbers quite significantly. However, based on publicly available info, no analysis is possible. And considering the horrible financials of GM US, it doesn't immediately look like they're siphoning off Opel funds via unfavorable transfer pricing: Opel's profitability appears to be somewhat better than the group as a whole, but no part is profitable by a long shot. So if no unit is in a tax-paying position anyway, what's the benefit of shifting costs around via transfer pricing?