Bankrupt US carmaker Chrysler will have to wait until at least the end of the week to get approval for its rescue by Italy's Fiat, while its larger US rival General Motors on Wednesday confirmed it was selling a key brand to a Chinese firm, according to dpa. An appeals court in New York set a decisive hearing on Chrysler for Friday after one of its creditors - an Indiana pension fund - appealed a lower court ruling that backed Chrysler's plan to exit bankruptcy earlier this week. Time is running out: Chrysler hopes to sell its best assets into a new company that would be supported by new US government loans and managed by Fiat. But the Italian company has warned that it might cancel the deal if Chrysler cannot get court approval for the plan by June 15. Chrysler has offered its creditors 2 billion dollars in cash to forego about 7 billion dollars in debt. But some bondholders believed they were getting a poor deal and hoped for liquidation. The Indiana pension fund that appealed the court's ruling is owed about 42 million dollars. The bosses of Chrysler and General Motors were set to testify before the US Senate later Wednesday on their restructuring plans. Both storied carmakers have been forced into bankruptcy by the United States' worst recession since the Great Depression. GM, which filed for its own bankruptcy on Monday, said its Hummer brand of off-road vehicles would be taken over by China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. GM first announced the sale Tuesday but would not reveal the buyer. GM still would not divulge the sales price on Wednesday, though US media reports have put it at under 500 million dollars. Hummer, one of GM's most inefficient brands, suffered heavily with a rise in petrol prices last year. Its sale is part of GM's plans to divest itself of a number of loss-making brands, including Saturn and the Swedish subsidiary Saab. GM's European operations Opel and Vauxhall are in the process of being taken over by Canadian-Austrian auto-parts maker Magna. Tengzhong is acquiring both the rights to the Hummer brand as well as its dealerships, GM said. In addition, a long-term production agreement is envisaged under terms that would rescue 3,000 jobs in the United States and preserve the Hummer management, GM said. The sale is to be completed by the end of the third business quarter of this year, with the deal still subject to Chinese regulators' approval. GM hopes to emerge from bankruptcy within 60-90 days as a new, leaner firm that has jettisoned its 27 billion dollars in debt. The US government will take 60-per-cent ownership and Canadian government 12 per cent.
