Billionaire investor Kerkorian dumps remaining Ford shares

Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian has sold off all of his remaining shares of Ford Motor Co (F.N), a spokeswoman for his investment firm, Tracinda Corp, said on Monday.

Tracinda, which briefly ranked as Ford's largest outside investor earlier this year, said in a regulatory filing in October that it had begun working with bankers to sell the 133.5 million shares of the No. 2 U.S. automaker it still held at that time.

It was not immediately clear when Tracinda had completed those remaining sales of Ford stock.

Kerkorian's final pullout from Ford completed a costly retreat for the activist investor, who has a mixed track record with investments at all three Detroit-based automakers.

A spokesman for Ford could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kerkorian, 91, previously held a nearly 10-percent stake in General Motors Corp (GM.N) and made a failed bid for Chrysler LLC last year.

He surprised analysts and investors in April when he began buying Ford shares and spent over $1 billion to take a stake in Ford at an average price per share of $7.10.

At its peak, Kerkorian held a 6.5 percent stake in Ford and had offered in June to support the automaker's turnaround efforts with an infusion of additional capital.

Ford has been widely considered to be the best-positioned of the three Detroit automakers at a time when all three have been hit hard by declining sales and tight credit.

When GM and Chrysler negotiated $17.4 billion of emergency loans from the U.S. government earlier this month, Ford held back, saying it expected to be able to weather the downturn on its own.

But conditions across the auto industry have taken a dramatic turn for the worse since September when credit suddenly tightened for both car shoppers and dealers.

In late October, Tracinda began selling Ford shares at $2.43, representing a loss of almost 66 percent from what the fund paid on average.

Since then, Ford's shares have traded between a low of $1.02 in November to a high of $3.54 earlier this month.

Ford shares fell almost 5 percent in trading on Monday to $2.18.

The Ford family holds just under 3 percent of the automaker's shares but controls 40 percent of the voting power through a separate class of shares.

Kerkorian's offer of additional capital for Ford had been seen as an endorsement of the company's strategy and management under Chief Executive Alan Mulally.

But Kerkorian's record as an activist investor had also raised questions earlier this year about whether his investment could be a threat to the Ford family's continued control of the automaker.

Ford announces $129M 3Q loss

Ford Motor Co. says it lost $129 million in the third quarter as the struggling automaker burned through $7.7 billion in cash.

The automaker also said Friday it will cut about 2,260 more white-collar employees in North America as it tries to weather the worst economic downturn in decades.

Ford says it lost 6 cents per share for the quarter, compared with a loss of $380 million, or 19 cents per share, a year ago.

The company posted a pretax loss of $2.7 billion from continuing operations. But it was offset partly by a $2 billion gain as the company shifted retiree health care liabilities to a trust run by the United Auto Workers.

Sales fell 22 percent to $32.1 billion from $41.1 billion due to lower volume and the sale of Jaguar and Land Rover.

Excluding special items, Ford lost $1.31 per share, worse than Wall Street expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters predicted a loss of 94 cents per share on sales of $28 billion.

Dearborn-based Ford reported its worst three-month performance ever in the second quarter, when it lost nearly $8.7 billion.

The cash burn — in which a company spends more money than it takes in — was far higher than the $2.1 billion it burned through in the second quarter.

Ford said the cash burn primarily reflected pretax automotive losses, changes in working capital and payments to its credit arm to reduce interest rates for buyers. It was exacerbated by sales drops and production cuts of 500,000 fewer vehicles from second-quarter levels, resulting in $3 billion less in incoming cash for the quarter.

Chief Financial Officer Lewis Booth would not say if he expects the cash burn rate will continue at the present levels.

"With our present assumptions, we are comfortable with our liquidity position," Booth told reporters Friday morning. "I think it goes without saying, forecasting the future at the moment is extremely difficult. Trying to find out just exactly what is happening with the consumer is really tough."

Industry analysts say that if the economy doesn't improve, Ford could run out of money sometime after 2010.

U.S. automakers have approached the U.S. government for low-interest loans as they try to weather the global economic slowdown.

Ford is among automakers that are talking with the European Commission for a 40 billion euro low-interest loan. It also is talking to other governments.

Ford said it will cut North American production in the fourth quarter by 40,000 units more than what was announced in September, primarily with shift reductions and temporary plant shutdowns. In September, the company announced a fourth-quarter production cut of 171,000 units over the fourth quarter of last year, mainly in trucks.

The salaried cuts, Ford said, equate to about 10 percent of its North American salaried work force of 22,600.

It also said that it has no plans to offer more buyout or early retirement packages to blue-collar workers.

Ford announced that some of its vehicle programs will be deferred, although the company described the moves as minor timing changes.