GM’s bankruptcy win

General Motors may soon be back, said Chris Shunk in Autoblog. A court has given the automaker the go ahead to split into two companies. Barring a successful appeal from hundreds of litigious GM creditors -- the “New GM” will leave bankruptcy by July 10, keeping its valuable Chevrolet and Cadillac brands and active facilities. The old GM, consisting of “soon-to-be-shuttered plants,” Pontiac, and “mountains of debt and liabilities,” won’t.

Compared with Chrysler’s bankruptcy, GM’s “was really painful and uneventful,” said Joe Weisenthal in Clusterstock. Perhaps because the creditors would get “absolutely zilch” in liquidation—the only alternative to reorganization—there was no real “heated drama,” conspiracy theories, or “obstructionist state pension funds looking to make a point about Obama.”

“GM may have been saved,” for now, said Douglas McIntyre in 24/7 Wall Street, but “it still has a very reasonable chance of failing and burning through all of the money the federal government has invested.” Bankruptcy has hastened an engineer and designer brain drain, and GM is already behind Ford, Toyota, and Honda in rolling out smaller and hybrid cars. No longer too big to fail, New GM may soon be too small to survive.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up