Beijing Automotive Industry Corp to Seek New Chances after Opel Buy Fails

SHANGHAI - July 29, 2009: The president of Beijing Automotive Industry Corp. (BAIC) said his company would continue to seek international cooperation opportunities though it had failed to reach an agreement with General Motors on the buying of Opel, the Beijing Morning Post reported Tuesday.

Xu Heyi told reporters that "based in China's capital city of Beijing, where there's an excellent business environment and a rich source of talent, and by taking advantage of its fully integrated infrastructure and industry resources, BAIC is well prepared to continue to expand its presence in China and world auto market."

He said that BAIC has set its 2015 car sales target at 3 million units and sales revenue at 300 billion yuan ($44 billion).

In the first half of this year BAIC managed to sell 580,000 vehicles, up 28 percent from a year earlier. Its sales revenue in the period rose 14.53 percent to 51.5 billion yuan and net profit rose 77.8 percent to 2.5 billion yuan, according to Xu.

GM said last Thursday it is no longer in talks with BAIC, about the sale of its Opel unit, and BAIC later said in a statement that regrettably, the two parties had failed to reach agreement on (the intellectual property) issue.