By Nick Reilly
CEO Opel/Vauxhall

Typically any new government or business leader is given 100 days to get acquainted with the situation develop and present a strategy. As of today I have been in office as CEO of Opel / Vauxhall for only 90 days and we鈥檙e formally announcing our plan for the future of this company.

During these past 90 days we鈥檝e been incredibly busy developing a first draft of our viability plan 鈥?presenting it to our employee representatives having a series of discussions with them talking to government officials and continuously refining and adjusting it to an ever-changing business environment.

So I am happy to report that our external assessors have given independent confirmation that our plan is sound. With that positive judgment we have now formally applied to the German government for loans or loan guarantees.

This allows us to keep up the momentum which is why I decided to present today our plan for the future of Opel/Vauxhall. Naturally there has been a jot of speculation about what the plan entails. I felt that we needed to present it now so that discussions can continue on a factual basis.

The goal of the five-year E11 billion plan is to secure long-term sustainable profitability through a growth initiative that will introduce new products as we renew existing carlines place extra emphasis on becoming a leader in alternative propulsions and explore possible expansion into growth markets.

Unfortunately we鈥檒l also have to take some rough decisions as we adjust our capacity to current and forecasted industry volumes in order to lower our break-even point. Along with that comes a planned reduction of jobs'>jobs.

The plan is much too comprehensive to explain in a simple blog post so if you鈥檙e interested in the details I encourage you to look at it at http://media.opel.com.

But the real work 鈥?the hard part 鈥?is not in creating a plan but in implementing it. It is a challenge I am positive we can meet. We have highly skilled people working for us. I know the power of the people at Opel and Vauxhall and knowing this power makes me confident we can make it. Ultimately this is an investment in a successful future of our company and our people.

We鈥檝e only just begun.