Russian billionaire buys stake in GM

Money Wasted!

Actually a good investment as he only paid 900 million; however, it's scary to think that a Russian could end up having such great influence within GM. In spite of the new 2008 Saturn VUE being such a screw-up with short seat cushion and cheap interior plastic, I still believe that GM will be the only domestic car maker to survive after global auto industry consolidation is complete.

He just wanted a Green Card

Roman Abromavich did the same thing to get into the UK, but he bought a football Club.

:-)

It's easier to cross the southern border as an illegal and wait for amnesty.

They used to sell Ladas in Canada but that venture eventually fizzled. I would not be seen dead in a Lada but the small SUV they had did have lots of headroom. I believe that GM ended up supplying 4-cylinder engines for it. The Lada SUV I saw at a car show in Montreal had a full size spare tire mounted on top of the engine in the engine compartment -- how stupid is that?

YET! Russia made it to the ocean floor of the North Pole before Canada -- how stupid is that?

All Peter McKay can say is, "uhh, its Canada's because the north belongs to Canada since the beaver is our mascot... oh, and polar bears." Something like that...

Hyundai, planting a flag on the ocean floor in the high Arctic was a brilliant public relations move but has nothing to do with the stupidity of mounting a tire in the engine compartment were the rubber is subjected to high ambient temperatures and which makes it more dificult to get at the engine. Furthermore, a high ambient temperature raises the tire pressure way above what it should be and if you try to compensate by infating the tire at low pressure to begin with, you'll end up with too low a pressure if you have to change the tire in a remote location in the winter.

As for the flag planting, it comes after Canada announced increased expenditures for new Arctic ice breakers. I predict an eventual political union, or at least a stronger economic union a la EU, between Canada and the U.S. which can stand up to any challenge by any other country trying to claim economic rights in the high Arctic.

Hmm, I'm sure a man this rich knows more than anyone of us how to invest their money. But, I'm still curious as why in the hell would someone spend all that money to invest in GM?

Probably, then he can control the GM import to Russia and make even more money that way.

Every publicly traded company has investors. If investing in a company made it instant gold, then all companies that have had big investors (relatively speaking of course) should always have ever-increasing stock prices.

But, that isn't the case, gentlemen, is it?

This could be a mistake, but then again, I don't have my time machine made yet to tell you whether or not it is a good decision. I'll let you all know when I can see the future.

Right....

Not every Billionaire got rich by being supersmart

A Lot of Russian Billionaires became Billionaires by being in the right place at the right time.

A Lot of state assets were allocated to them during the changeover from the Yeltsin days.