The competition to buy General Motors Corp.’s (NYSE: GM) Opel and Vauxhall units heated up last Friday as the three primary suitors were reportedly joined by an unidentified Chinese automaker.

Meanwhile, a bankruptcy filing is not certain in the GM restructuring case, and reports that the Obama administration will steer the automaker into bankruptcy as early as this week are premature, Reuters reported on Friday, citing a source familiar with the situation.

Negotiations will likely continue right up to the May 31 deadline, the source said, with the Chrysler LLC case - where the process continued until the deadline - serving as a good comparison.

Magna International Inc. (NYSE: MGA) appeared to gain the early edge Friday in the race to buy Opel, surpassing rival bidders Fiat S.p.A. (OTC: FIATY) and RHJ International Inc. (PINK: RHJIF).

German officials said they were

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In a market like this one, it pays to note the subtle differences between ostensibly similar assets. For example, there are car stocks and then there are car stocks. (Yes, I am writing about cars again, but not for the whole column, honest!)

Right now you can buy shares of General Motors (GM:NYSE) with a most unusual provenance: They used to belong to GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, GM North America President Troy Clarke, GM Vice Chairman Thomas Stephens, and Group Vice Presidents Gary Cowger, Carl-Peter Forster and Ralph Szygenda.

You Can’t Fix Stupid

Now I know we are supposed to think of stock shares as perfectly fungible. And it’s quite impossible to know for a fact that the shares you might be buying today actually came from some GM exec’s personal hoard.

Still, there is a touch of something – I’m not quite sure what: irony? fraud? despicable

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In an odd bit of capitalist irony, the U.S. banking crisis could end up as the catalyst that finally jump-starts the long-moribund market for initial public stock offerings (IPOs). In fact, it already appears to be happening. U.S. banks - under government order to raise capital as a result of the recently completed bank stress tests, and desperate to shed the onerous shackles of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) - have been announcing billions in secondary stock offerings in recent days, and experts say many more such deals can be expected. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) yesterday (Tuesday) became the latest U.S. companies to pursue new sources of capital, announcing deals that involved offerings of stock or debt, or outright asset sales. Those announcements ...