GM still hasn’t made any deals

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it does not expect to reach agreement on concessions with the United Auto Workers union or with the Treasury Department on its debt-for-equity exchange before a May 26 deadline.

Both deals are part of the restructuring effort GM must complete by June 1, or it could be sent into bankruptcy protection.

GM said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the agreements aren’t expected to be reached by May 26 — the deadline for GM’s bondholders to accept an offer to take 10 percent of the company’s stock in exchange for wiping out $27 billion in debt. GM had said in its original debt swap offer that it expected to disclose terms of a UAW deal to cut labor costs before that deadline.

Also in the filing, GM said it doesn’t expect to reach a deal with Treasury to swap at least half of GM’s debt to the government for stock. The company estimates that half the debt as of June 1 would total $10 billion. GM has discussed giving the government half of the company’s outstanding shares to wipe out half of its debt.

The filing did not say what obstacles to the agreements are still outstanding, and spokeswoman Sherri Childers Arb would not comment. A message left for UAW spokesman Roger Kerson wasn’t immediately returned.

The automaker qualified its statements, though, saying it could still disclose a UAW agreement before the deadline and could announce an extension of its bond exchange offer on May 27.

GM has taken $15.4 billion in government loans and could get another $11.6 billion by the end of the year.

If its bond exchange offer goes through, GM plans to issue 62 billion new shares and then do a 100-for-1 reverse stock split. The whole deal would severely cut the value of GM’s existing shares.

The other parts of GM’s proposed ownership structure include offering the UAW 39 percent of its shares in exchange for wiping out half of the $20 billion that GM must pay into a union health-care trust. The trust will take over retiree health-care payments starting Jan. 1.

The remaining 1 percent of GM shares would go to those who hold the company’s current 611 million outstanding shares.

Bondholders have said the whole deal is unfair to them because the government and the UAW are getting greater stakes in the company for retiring smaller amounts of debt.

GM and the UAW have been negotiating for weeks about labor cost reductions and payments to the trust fund. But the talks this week were overshadowed by a public spat about the automaker’s plans to import vehicles from other countries even as it closes 16 U.S. factories.