GM Dumps Tradition as It Ponders Opel Sale

General Motors Co. interest in selling its Opel unit to PSA Group shows the company is rethinking its views about market share, sales volume and the need for a production base presence in Europe.

Analysts note that GM has continuously lost money on its European operations for 17 years. Since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009, those losses have totaled $9.1 billion.

Years of restructuring programs haven’t paid off. GM, which had expected Opel to break even in 2016, now says the unit won’t post a full-year profit until 2018. Now, opines Bloomberg News, CEO Mary Barra “has had enough.”

Barra has emphasized since becoming CEO three years ago is that her top priority is sustainably strong profits. Bloomberg notes that in 2015 the company mothballed operations in Indonesia, Thailand and Russia because of the dismal outlook for profits in those markets.

GM President Dan Ammann describes the approach as making tough decisions and moving on. Abandoning Europe, where GM sold 1.2 million vehicles last year, would be by far the biggest example of that policy. Selling Opel would drop GM’s global sales volume below 9 million units and relegate it to fourth place in sales after Volkswagen, Toyota and the Renault-Nissan alliance.