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Wanxiang outbids Hong Kong's Li for Fisker -sources
BY TOM HALS
Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:05am IST
Feb 14 (Reuters) - Wanxiang Group, China's largest auto parts company, won a bankruptcy auction for the assets of Fisker Automotive, the defunct manufacturer of the Karma plug-in hybrid sports car, two sources who were briefed on the auction told Reuters.
Wanxiang outbid an affiliate of Richard Li, a Hong Kong billionaire and Fisker investor, the people said on Friday.
The sale will be presented to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday for approval by Judge Kevin Gross.
The auction began on Wednesday and ended on Friday. The sources, who declined to be identified by name because the result is not yet public, did not disclose the value of Wanxiang's final bid. Li had presented an initial bid of around $55 million.
California-based Fisker was the brainchild of Henrik Fisker, a former BMW designer. The company's elegant cars were hobbled by cost overruns and tech glitches and in 2012 it stopped production to conserve cash.
Wanxiang has been building a U.S. manufacturing presence and last year the U.S. government cleared it to acquire the bankrupt assets of A123 Systems Inc, which made Fisker batteries.
Both Fisker and A123 were funded in part with loans from the U.S. government that were meant to foster clean-fuel technologies. Wanxiang outbid Johnson Controls Inc for A123, and the Chinese company also overcame an active lobbying effort to block it from obtaining technology developed with U.S. taxpayer money.
Fisker filed for bankruptcy in November with a plan to sell its assets to Li in return for Li forgiving a portion of the U.S. government loan he had bought. Fisker creditors opposed that plan, which would have left them with almost nothing, and instead teamed up with Wanxiang and pushed for an auction.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/02/14/fisker-auction-idINL2N0LJ1QX20140214