BREAKING: GM reportedly delays board meeting as new Swedish bidders emerge for Saab

Just when we thought the financial soap opera surrounding Saab couldn't get any more convoluted or tortured, it has. Bloomberg is reporting that General Motors has once again delayed a meeting planned for today to determine the Swedish automaker's fate. The gathering will now take place tomorrow, in part because a new bidder has entered the fray, Genii Capital, the private-equity group that purchased Renault's Formula One team just last month. According to the report, Genii intends to make a cash offer for the brand, and it plans to use the business plan of an earlier bidder, Koenigsegg, as a roadmap to getting Saab into the black by 2012 with just 105,000 units per year.

For his part, interim GM chief executive officer Ed Whitacre told reporters yesterday that he isn't optimistic about consummating a sale, remarking that nobody has yet stepped up to offer the necessary funds for Saab: "It's real easy – show up with the money and you can have it." Naturally, such statements might also be designed to increase the size of the bids, and that statement may have come before Whitacre was made aware of Genii entering the fray, but we digress...

Of course, Spyker Cars, the bidder for whom the deadline was originally extended until today, is still very much in the mix, but there are also new rumors of yet another Swedish group making a last-last-minute play for the brand. More as it happens...

[Sources: Bloomberg, Reuters via The New York Times, SaabsUnited]