Saab's Reluctant Seller

Somehow I get the sense that General Motors is in the same position with Saab as Condé Nast was in with Gourmet. The company doesn't actually want to find a buyer that will take over and turn around the money-losing property, because if such a buyer and turned-around company do emerge, they will just be a competitor for General Motors and its brands, the same way that a sold and turned around Gourmet would have been a competitor for Condé Nast's Bon Appetit. If GM were to sell Saab, it might actually make business sense for GM to accept a lower bid for the asset from an investment group that GM thinks is more likely to eventually fail. I tend to think that the property right of owning a business includes the right to shut it down, but it's surprising, given the government role at General Motors, that we aren't hearing more from anti-trust enforcement types about the need to make sure that GM acts in the interest of a competitive market overall for consumers rather than in its own narrow corporate self-interest. It may be because a lot of the jobs at stake are in Sweden rather than in America. But it may also be because the Obama administration is both the owner of General Motors and the antitrust enforcer. The same reasoning applies, by the way, to why GM closed Oldsmobile, Saturn, and Pontiac rather than selling them to a buyer who might succeed with them. If a potential buyer could get the right political and legal juice behind him, he might be able to force GM to sell the assets at a bargain price, or even to assume a share of the legacy costs going forward.