Frantic final negotiations are going on as Opel's suitors revise their plans to try to impress the German government in what has rapidly turned into a high powered 'beauty contest'. With Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne due to meet government ministers in Berlin today for a second consecutive day, and having revised downwards the amount of state loan aid he is looking for, the other bidders, Magna and RHJ, are also negotiating the terms of their offers.

Meanwhile in Italy the government's response is still broadly supportive of Fiat's plan to create a giant new carmaking group, although Premier Berlusconi hasn't become involved with negotiations that have in recent days been driven by his German counterpart, Chancellor Angela Merkel. Between Fiat and the Italian government there is some "give and take on the factories and employment," underlined Italy's Economic Minister Giulio Tremonti during recording of the Porta a Porta show, reported AGI yesterday, Agreeing with UDC leader Pier Ferdinando Casini, who earlier said how "the factories in Pomigliano or Termini Imerese or other cannot be victims in these types of operations", Tremonti said that "Casini is correct when he says that there are historic relations and give and take with Fiat on factories and employment." The Fiat-Opel negotiations are "a very complex match played between governments'' added Tremonti on Porta a Porta. "It's a match played between governments'' he noted ''which seems to go back to the era of State participations but the German government, regional governments, the Russian government and the American government are playing a role. It's a very complex match."

Meanwhile it has emerged that Austro-Canadian components manufacturer Magna International is engaged in streamlining its plan for redundancies at the Opel factories in Germany, reports AGI. Talks on this issue with trade unions very likely will end today. The plan under discussion is to transfer the production of the Opel Astra model from Antwerp in Belgium to Bochum in Germany, which would mean closing the Antwerp plant, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper has claimed. The first offer by Magna International envisaged 2,500 redundancies coming in Germany, of which 2,200 alone would be at the Bochum plant. Those cuts were deemed unacceptable by Juergen Ruettgers, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, the region where the plant is headquartered and where 5,000 people are employed. The new Magna proposal ought to involve a less negative employment impact on Bochum. Convincing Ruettgers would be a big advantage for Magna who already has the support of the governors of Hesse amd Rhineland-Pfalz, where the Rüsselsheim and Kaiserslautern plants are. Yesterday both Magna and the third key bidder, RHJ International, the private equity company controlled by New York based Ripplewood, presented their plans to the unions at Rüsselsheim, the Opel headquarters.

In Berlin Marchionne was in combative mood yesterday, assured that Fiat's proposals present the best route to secure Opel's future. "I hope that the economy will be more important than politics in the negotiations for the purchase of Opel". According to reports, Marchionne stated as much when leaving the Italian embassy in Berlin to meet with Germany's deputy chancellor, Frank Walter Steinmeier yesterday.