LORDSTOWN, Oh. (KDKA) – General Motors will be selling their Lordstown, Ohio, plant to a company that makes electric trucks. President Donald Trump announced the sale Wednesday morning in a post on social media website Twitter. GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO! Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, who informed me that, subject to a UAW agreement etc., GM will be selling their beautiful Lordstown Plant to Workhorse, where they plan to build Electric Trucks. GM will also be spending $700,000,000 in Ohio… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2019 President Trump said on Twitter that he spoke to Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, who relayed the news of the sale to the president. RELATED STORIES: Workhorse, a company based out of Loveland, Ohio, will begin production on electric trucks at the plant that used to produce. President Trump also said that General Motors will be investing $700 million in Ohio. ….in 3 separate locations, creating another 450 jobs. I have been working nicely with GM to get this done. Thank you to Mary B, your GREAT Governor, and Senator Rob Portman. With all the car companies coming back, and much more, THE USA IS BOOMING! READ MORE: Man Who Threatened Youngstown Jewish Community Center Pleads Guilty — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2019 General Motors will create 450 jobs in three separate locations, according to his tweet. According to the president, the sale is part of the return of the vehicle industry in the U.S. “With all the car companies coming back, and much more, THE USA IS BOOMING!” The Lordstown plant was home to the production of the Chevrolet Cruze sedan. General Motors announced the plant closure in November 2018. The last replacement parts were manufactured at the plant on April 5. Approximately 1,600 employees worked at the Lordstown plant. Stay With KDKA.com For More Details<doc-sep>Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- As Covid-19 continues to ravage India, financial professionals across the country are grappling with an increasingly surreal disconnect between the epidemic’s devastation and a record-breaking boom in local markets.The world’s worst coronavirus outbreak has battered India’s economy and lifted its official Covid death toll to more than 318,000 -- a figure that experts say is likely a significant undercount.And yet investors continue to snap up Indian assets, fueling a 65% rally in the Nifty 50 Index over the past 12 months that has outpaced every other major equity benchmark worldwide. The measure’s surge to a record on Thursday has coincided with the fastest rate of Indian initial public offerings since 2017 and an unprecedented flood of foreign-currency bond issuance by local companies.While the combination of pandemic pain and financial-market euphoria is hardly unique to India, nowhere else has the contrast been so extreme.Bulls say the gains are justified by central bank stimulus at home and abroad, along with signs that the current virus wave may be peaking and optimism that India’s long-term economic growth potential will emerge from the crisis intact. Skeptics point to overly rosy earnings estimates and the risk of further outbreaks in a country where vaccination rates remain stubbornly low. India’s central bank weighed in on Thursday, warning in its annual report that the surge in stocks “poses the risk of a bubble.”What’s clear is that financiers on all sides of the debate are stretched thin. Booming markets have left the industry swamped with work at a time when many employees have been sickened by the virus. Some have had to franticly search for medical help after hospitals were overrun and oxygen supplies fell short. Almost everyone has at least one friend or family member who has died.“You feel numb, as if we are in the midst of a war and are losing people one after the other,” said Vikaas Sachdeva, the Mumbai-based chief executive officer of Emkay Investment Managers Ltd., who lost four members of his extended family to the virus.Sachdeva expects Indian markets to be volatile in the near term as investors weigh uncertainties around the vaccination program and the possibility of a third wave. His firm has been buying shares of Indian companies with “high quality” management, betting that the country’s long-term investment case remains intact.India’s $2.9 trillion stock market has been buoyed in part by resilient demand from international investors, who’ve purchased a net $34.9 billion of shares over the past 12 months. While they pared holdings in April and early May, buying by local mutual funds and insurance companies has helped fill the gap. A steady decline in reported Covid cases since mid-May -- along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to avoid another nationwide lockdown -- have added weight to calls for further market gains.Indian companies have taken advantage of the exuberance in markets to raise about $4 billion via public offerings since the start of the year, on track for the busiest first-half since 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.“The IPO boom is being driven by Indian technology companies coming of age with businesses doing better than expected,” said Sunil Khaitan, India head of global capital markets at Bank of America. “Tech companies are advancing their fundraising plans and financial sponsors also believe this is a good time to bring in public market investors in these companies amidst ample global liquidity.”Khaitan expects India IPO volumes to more than double in 2021 from the previous year.The surge in activity has left some financial firms scrambling to complete deals after employees were sidelined by the virus. The head of equity capital markets at a Mumbai-based investment bank, who asked not be named discussing private matters, said that at one point 25% of his 40-person group was infected.About 200,000 Indian bank employees have been infected and 1,200 have died since the pandemic began, the industry’s largest union estimated this month.Among the biggest risks for India market optimists is another virus wave. Just 3.2% of the population has been fully vaccinated, versus 39.7% in the U.S. and 10.1% in Brazil, according to Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Tracker.The Indian economy’s recovery from last year’s recession is already showing signs of sputtering. The country lost 10 million jobs in May, according to private research firm Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Among the 40 companies in the Nifty 50 index that have posted quarterly results so far, more than half have missed analysts’ estimates. While India’s central bank predicts the economy will grow at a 10.5% pace this fiscal year, other forecasters including S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service have recently cut their estimates to below 10%.“If this Covid situation keeps affecting newer areas and new strains keep emerging, then there is a problem for the near term,” said Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at HDFC Securities Ltd.Sachdeva, the Emkay CEO, said Covid will impact him and his colleagues in ways that go far beyond their work in finance. He’s reading “The Difficulty of Being Good” by Gurcharan Das, who writes about his search for a meaningful life.“The pandemic has brought about a change in many of us and we are more aware of things that matter most in life,” Sachdeva said. “We would though have to see if this is indeed a permanent change when life comes back normal.”(Updates death toll in second paragraph)More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.<doc-sep>General Motors appeared to move Wednesday to salve wounds in Ohio and Ontario from its November announcement that it will idle five North American manufacturing facilities. Late Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that GM is selling its Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio to a company called Workhorse to build electric trucks. But not so fast, said GM. In a media statement released about an hour later, GM said it is "in discussions with Workhorse Group Inc. and an affiliated, newly formed entity to sell the company's Lordstown Complex." The move has the potential to bring significant production and electric vehicle assembly jobs to the plant, GM said in a statement. Upon final agreement, the entity, led by Workhorse founder Steve Burns, would buy the plant and Workhorse would hold a minority interest in it. "This potential agreement creates a positive outcome for all parties involved and will help solidify the leadership of Workhorse's role in the EV community," said Workhorse CEO Duane Hughes. Separately, minutes earlier, a GM Canada executive and the Canadian autoworkers union announced that GM will invest $126 million in its Oshawa Assembly plant in Canada to transition it to a stamping plant and test track facility, preserving some 300 jobs. Both plants were slated to be indefinitely idled as part of GM's plan, announced in November, to kill most of its sedans and save $2 billion to $2.5 billion in costs this year. At the same time, GM said it would idle Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, Warren Transmission and a transmission plant in the Baltimore area. Lordstown sale The Lordstown plant, which shut down production earlier this year, made the Chevrolet Cruze compact car, which is being discontinued. Trump tweeted: "GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO! Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, who informed me that, subject to a UAW agreement etc., GM will be selling their beautiful Lordstown Plant to Workhorse, where they plan to build Electric Trucks. GM will also be spending $700,000,000 in Ohio..." UAW Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement that the UAW’s position is unequivocal: "General Motors should assign a product to the Lordstown facility and continue operating it. A federal lawsuit filed by the UAW over the closing of the Lordstown, Baltimore and Warren facilities is still pending, and the UAW will continue its effort to protect the contractual rights of its members at these locations." Dittes said the parties will discuss product placement issues during national negotiations, which will begin in July. "We will monitor this situation as it develops to determine what course of action will most benefit UAW-represented workers at General Motors," said Dittes. Trump did note on Twitter that the plant's sale would be "subject to a UAW agreement." Professor Harley Shaiken of the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in labor issues, said the UAW will not easily go along with the plant sale. He also said the idea of selling a massive plant such as Lordstown to a startup like Workhouse is dubious. “There may be the possibility for the future, but it’s a long way from the reality of jobs in the plants at the scale at what Lordstown provided going forward,” said Shaiken. GM is probably hoping that the UAW will grab at any possibility to save some jobs, but the issue of outsourcing underlies the problem, Shaiken said. “At Lordstown you had two rounds of concessions by workers and a highly productive plant. The workers felt they did what GM asked and were producing in high quality and top efficiency, so they thought they had a future,” said Shaiken. “All the workers are aware that Chevy put the Blazer in Mexico, and that obviously could have gone to Lordstown.” More:GM removes made-in-Mexico Chevy Blazer from Comerica Park display after controversy Trump — along with a bipartisan chorus of other political officials, including Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren — had criticized GM for announcing plans to shut the plant. "With all the car companies coming back, and much more, THE USA IS BOOMING!" Trump said. Workhorse did not immediately respond to a Free Press request seeking comment, but Wednesday’s news sent Workhouse Group stock up 214%, to $2.65 per share. Industry expert John McElroy, who hosts “Autoline,” called Workhorse an interesting company, which has had teething problems common for startups. But he expressed some doubts about the Lordstown deal. “No doubt their sales are minuscule, which makes buying the Lordstown plant a real head-scratcher. That is a monstrous facility, easily capable of making 250,000 vehicles a year, and there’s no way Workhorse needs that kind of capability. Elio made a similar mistake buying the GM Shreveport, Louisiana, plant, and Fisker buying the GM Wilmington, Delaware, plant,” McElroy told the Free Press. What is Workhorse? “Loveland-based Workhorse designs and builds high-performance battery-electric vehicles including trucks, aircraft and drones along with monitoring systems to help fleet operators optimize energy and route efficiency,” according to Cincinnati Business Courier. The paper noted in February that Workhorse “is also one of five finalists awaiting a decision from the U.S. Postal Service on its $5 billion federal contract to replace its fleet.” Last month, Workhorse announced a partnership with Rochester Hills-based Prefix Corp. “for the final design, development and production of its NGEN series all-electric delivery van. This partnership signals a key step in moving forward following Workhorse's change of leadership in February 2019,” according to a posting on PRNewswire. Company cofounder Burns was replaced as CEO in February by President and Chief Operating Officer Hughes, according to the Courier. Burns, the Courier noted, was to remain as a consultant while focusing on development of the company’s “SureFly electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft business.” At this year’s Detroit auto show, Burns showed off the SureFly “flying car.” He said then that the company was taking pre-orders for $200,000. Working with Prefix, Workhorse is trying to build an “underlying platform” to support three different capacity delivery vans, according to the PRNewswire posting. An investment by Workhorse would almost surely be substantially smaller than GM's Lordstown operation at its peak, when the plant employed thousands of workers. When the plant was idled March 6, it employed 1,500 workers and ran a single shift. Workhorse had $763,000 in revenue in 2018, down from $10 million in 2017. In its most recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Workhorse provided some details on its customers and vehicles, including, presumably, the truck that would be built in Lordstown should a deal with GM happen. More jobs in Ohio Burns said in the GM statement, "The first vehicle we would plan to build if we were to purchase the Lordstown Complex would be a commercial electric pickup, blending Workhorse's technology with Lordstown's manufacturing expertise." GM said it has been in discussions with the UAW regarding the impact of changing market conditions on the Lordstown facility since last November and the discussions "will include this opportunity." "We remain committed to growing manufacturing jobs in the U.S., including in Ohio, and we see this development as a potential win-win for everyone," Barra said in the statement. "Workhorse has innovative technologies that could help preserve Lordstown's more than 50-year tradition of vehicle assembly work." Trump also said GM would invest $700 million in three plants to create 450 jobs. He did not identify the locations. GM said it is adding 450 jobs at its facilities in Toledo, Moraine and Parma. Oshawa transition Meanwhile, Canadian autoworker union Unifor and GM said they reached a deal to keep the Oshawa Assembly plant running and save some 300 jobs there. The plant was scheduled to indefinitely idle in December, affecting about 2,600 jobs. On Wednesday, Unifor President Jerry Dias and GM Canada President Travis Hester said GM will transition the facility to parts manufacturing and advanced vehicle testing. GM will invest $126 million in Oshawa to build stamping, related sub-assembly, and other miscellaneous activities for GM and other auto industry customers, said Hester. GM will also convert 55 acres on the southern part of the Oshawa Plant property into a test track for autonomous and advanced technology vehicles, expanding GM’s Canadian Technical Centre.<doc-sep>
General Motors is seeking to sell one of its Ohio plants to an upstart truck manufacturer and investing $700 million in three other facilities in the region, a move that could help appease critics who blasted the carmaker for choosing to close the Lordstown plant and shed up to 15,000 jobs. Trump made the announcement on Twitter on Wednesday, noting that he had just spoken to CEO Mary Barra. GM said it is in talks to sell the Lordstown plant to Workhorse Group Inc., a company seeking to build an electric pickup but one that has struggled financially, posting just $21,000 in revenue in the final months of 2018. “We remain committed to growing manufacturing jobs in the U.S., including in Ohio, and we see this development as a potential win-win for everyone,” Barra said in a statement. Ticker Security Last Change Change % GM GENERAL MOTORS CO. 59.90 +1.80 +3.10% Workhorse previously revamped its leadership, replacing founder Steve Burns with COO Duane Hughes. It also recently borrowed $35 million from hedge fund Marathon Asset Management. “This potential agreement creates a positive outcome for all parties involved and will help solidify the leadership of Workhorse’s role in the EV community,” Hughes said. GM also said it was adding 450 jobs to manufacturing plants in Ohio, a decision the carmaker made because the "U.S. economy and our core business are strong." “We also expect to bring more jobs to the U.S. over time in support of the expected provisions" of the new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, according to Barra. Known as the USMCA, the agreement has yet to be ratified by Congress. Lawmakers including Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, previously criticized Barra and GM for opting to downsize operations in Ohio and layoff workers in Canada and the U.S. In a tweet on Wednesday, Portman thanked Trump for his role said he was "hopeful we will see the # Lordstown plant humming again." GM will expand operations in Ohio at plants in Toledo, Parma and Moraine. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP The Moraine facility manufactures the diesel engine for the Detroit-based company's new heavy-duty pickups. Toledo Transmission produces the firm's new 10-speed automatic transmission, and the Parma center will begin using lase cell welding technology.