Strange Automotive Bedfellows, 2009 Edition
July 20, 2009
By Bill Visnic
There are plenty of strange auto-industry tie-ups to get accustomed to this year, such as internal-combustion innovator Daimler AG and electric-car impresario Tesla Motors Inc., or, well, Chrysler Group LLC and Fiat S.p.A.
But one of the weirder six-degrees-of-separation connections of the year is between Steve Rattner, now-retired czar of the Presidential Task Force On Automobiles and Cerberus Capital Management, former majority owner of Chrysler.
Seems Rattner, who quit as a principal in the hedge fund Quadrangle Group to lead the PTFOA, is getting back to the business of shedding some of Quadrangle's underperforming investments, a highly visible one being Alpha Media, publisher of five-minutes-of-fame "laddie" magazine titles such as Maxim and Stuff.
It may be years before Rattner's performance in turning around the busted domestic automakers can be judged, but by most accounts, Rattner, a former journalist with The New York Times, and Quadrangle made a crappy call on Alpha Media, which borrowed $100 million from Cerberus to finance the total $250 million to purchase Alpha.
The laddie-magazine genre puked itself out minutes after the hedge fund owners took over. So now Quadrangle reportedly has defaulted on its loan payments and Cerberus -- the company that will live in infamy for its own awful timing (and judgment) with its Chrysler investment -- will assume yet another fading icon in a failing industry.
And while the Alpha investment was not a great call, there is rampant speculation Rattner hastily relinquished the car-czar title to deal with an ongoing investigation about Quadrangle's relationship with the New York State Common Retirement Fund, an investor that at least has nothing to do with autos or publishing.
Posted by Michelle Krebs at 4:24 AM under Chrysler , Companies , Personalities , Rumors | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
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