Volkswagen Allowed to Offer Auto Finance Service in China
Volkswagen Auto-Financing (China) Co., Ltd. announced that the China Banking Regulation Commission (CBRC), China’s top banking regulator, has approved the company to launch the RMB business in China’s automotive finance area.
Info on Car Safety Off-Limits to Public
The federal agency that oversees auto safety has decided — based largely on arguments from automakers and their Washington, D.C., lobbyists — that reams of data relating to unsafe automobiles or defective parts will not be available to the public. Specifically, the government has banned the release of car and truck warranty-claims information, customer complaints and early-warning reports about defects from dealers, automakers and rental car companies, even if media outlets or other groups push for it under the Freedom of Information Act.
AMN Publisher Jon Owens Talks about “Getting in Sync”
Technology is a fact of life in business. Technology is ready for us. The question is, are we ready for it? We’ve run the alphabet soup of acronyms by you before: PIES, HTML, DAC, XML and on and on. But don’t make light of them. They will be common jargon for you very soon.
Private Equity Firms Drive Away With More Auto Parts Deals
The auto parts industry continues to be one of the favorite places for private equity firms to put their money as they invested more than $1.5 billion in the industry in July.
Herman Trend Alert: Benefits Will Return
In the highly competitive employment market of the late 1990s, companies scrambled to offer new and different employee benefits to attract the job applicants they needed in the hot economy. In response to the economic slowdown, when corporate strategy shifted from hiring to layoff, employers reduced their investment in a wide range of employee benefits. Many of those benefits will be reinstated as recruiting and retention intensify.
Automakers Shift Focus to Health Care Crisis
An aging former auto industry worker underscores a key challenge facing the U.S. automotive industry and all of manufacturing in the years to come. “Our oldest retiree is 109 years old,” said Jerry Elson, vice president at General Motors. The man, who retired in 1958, is the oldest of 1.1 million people — including 500,000 retirees — for whom GM spent more than $4.8 billion on health care last year. That’s more than the largest U.S. automaker spends on steel, even with steel prices up 30 percent to 60 percent this year.
China’s First Automotive Financial Company is Approved
The joint venture automotive financial company between General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC) and SAIC Finance Co. has been formally approved by the China Banking Regulatory Commission. The Shanghai-headquartered joint venture will see registered capital of approximately $60 million (CNY500 million), and will mainly provide joint ventures of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Group (SAIC), parent of SAIC Finance Co., and General Motors, with wholesale and retail credit services.
IRS Lets Small Business Taxpayers Expense Up to $100,000 of Software, Other Property
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued proposed (REG-152549-03) and final and temporary regulations (T.D. 9146) that generally let small business taxpayers elect to deduct up to $100,000 of certain tangible property and computer software. The election applies to qualifying property purchased and placed in service in a taxable year beginning after 2002 and before 2006, reflecting changes made by the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the Treasury Department said in a news release.
Automotive Suppliers Brought Down New Jobs in July
A disappointing employment report from the Department of Commerce last week caught Wall Street off guard and sent stock prices tumbling for the second day in a row. The unemployment rate edged down slightly to 5.5 percent in July, from 5.6 percent in June, but the bad news came in the area of job creation. Only 32,000 new jobs were added in July; economists had been expecting more than 200,000.
Charting Your Supply Chain DNA
How do you develop an integrated operating system that can simultaneously improve working capital, enhance revenue and margin, and improve order-to-delivery speed and predictability? One innovative approach is to select and configure a unique blend of capabilities and strategies, or “supply chain DNA,” across the dimensions of process, information, cash and organization. Over the coming weeks we’ll present a multi-part roadmap to executing that approach-and in the process, achieving all three benefits at once.
NTSB Recommends Requiring Cars to Be Equipped With “Black Boxes”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that the federal government require passenger vehicles to be equipped with “black boxes” that record speed, seat belt use, braking and other factors, which could provide investigators with better information when they probe accidents. This was the first time NTSB has issued any recommendation on event data recorders.
Rift Harming Auto Industry
The tense relationship between Detroit’s automakers and their suppliers was on display Wednesday as executives from both camps spoke about cooperating and collaborating while taking subtle or direct swipes at each other.