Currently reading: Magna to cut 10,500 Opel jobs
But no word yet on any cuts in the UK

Canadian car parts manufacturer Magna could cut as many as 10,500 jobs at Opel and Vauxhall across Europe.

Magna and its Russian funding partner Sberbank agreed a 55 per cent deal to takeover Opel/Vauxhall from General Motors last week and reports from Germany over the weekend reported the job cuts were likely.

Magna's co-chief executive Siegfried Wolf said in Frankfurt that the job cuts were likely and 4500 of the 10,500 could be in Germany.

Magna was Germany's preferred bidder after it competed for months against rival bidder RHJ International.

Germany's economy minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said there would be more job cuts than originally intended.

“Since spring, it was known by all the parties, including representatives of the [Opel] employees, and from the information I was given, that the number [of job cuts] mentioned by Magna only concerned the productions sector but other job cuts were feared in administration," he said.

Opel employees around 50,000 people in Europe, 10,000 of these are in Germany. Magna has said that it will keep all four German plants open.

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C.Schweizer 14 September 2009

Re: Magna to cut 10,500 Opel jobs

Autocar wrote:
Opel employees around 50,000 people in Europe, 10,000 of these are in Germany.

LOL don't know where you got that number from A-C. I wouldn't have thought Merkel agreed to €4.5bn in loans in exchange for Magna cutting 45% of Opels German workforce.