GM offers Matiz and Lanos rights to Daewoo-FSO

General Motors (GM) has offered to hand over intellectual property rights concerning production of their Matiz and Lanos models by the plant in Zeran owned by Daewoo-FSO on the condition that a bid for the supply of carriers entered by Mowag, a company controlled by GM, is accepted by the Polish army. In order to make the offer more competitive, the company has decided to assist Daewoo-FSO additionally through offset deals. "The Warsaw plant would receive rights worth $16 million. Currently, under an agreement between Daewoo Motor Co. and GM, the new investor in the Korean parent company, Daewoo-FSO is allowed to produce these models for a period of two years and to sell them for three," said an anonymous source close to the deal, quoted by Puls Biznesu. These intellectual rights seem priceless in the event that the current negotiations with Rover fail. In such a scenario, the government is working out an alternative whereby Daewoo-FSO would continue production based on the chassis of these two models, having engines supplied by Rover and bodywork re-styled by an Italian designer at a cost of around zl. 1.2 million. The new model would be sold under a new name. (Puls Biznesu, p. 7) A.K.