Mirko Mikelic Quotations

Maytag produces 99 percent in the U.S., and they are just not price competitive.

My concern is, do they have the big picture right? They're moving in the right direction. Obviously, they're in a perilous situation. They continue losing market share. Their costs are increasing. You can't sustain that.

GM is desperate for the cash. They need it to pay out a lot of people, so they're trying to bolster their cash position.

I'm stunned. I thought they would need to do at least something to appease the Justice Department.

Whirlpool has moved a lot of operations overseas, and that's helped out with their costs.

What incentive is there for GM dealers to use GMAC going forward if it is not really part of GM?

With the costs Maytag has, they've just become less and less competitive. This industry is so competitive and having appliances coming from China at a fraction of costs at Maytag and Whirlpool only adds to that.

Through their product offering, price-competitiveness, and moving production overseas, Whirlpool has been able to compete on price. That's how they've been winning.

People are very surprised that there is strong demand out there. There's still a strong housing market.

It's all about market share. You can't have the cost base and keep losing market share year after year.

The bonds had a little bit of a run-up over the week, which I thought was probably a little overdone. They're still facing the same problems. In the short term they need to sell a controlling stake in GMAC, get the cash of $10 billion or more, and then resolve the Delphi situation.

They wanted to stay out there in the corporate market even though it hurts them. The coupon was huge, but they're in a serious situation.

They've made the moves they thought they needed to, like moving 30 percent of the jobs down to Mexico. That may be good for the American consumer, but it's not good for the workers. It's not easy on the economy here.

Investors know that Maytag is going to have to shed some of the businesses in order for the deal to go through.

Investors are not convinced (the deal) will necessarily go through, or at least as two firms as we know them today with the full (product) line-up.