Kerkorian Won’t Talk Settlement

Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian angrily ruled out settlement talks with DaimlerChrysler on Wednesday as he left the courtroom where he is suing the company over terms of the 1998 link-up between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler.

“I will never entertain settlement talks with Daimler,” Kerkorian snapped at reporters.

“We are going to trial,” he said. “We will lose it or win it. This is not about money. It’s about deceit and fraud on Daimler’s part.”

Kerkorian spoke after his second day on the witness stand in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del. In a civil lawsuit, the 86-year-old Las Vegas casino operator is seeking to prove that what Daimler-Benz pitched as a “merger of equals” was really a secret German takeover of the No. 3 U.S. automaker.

Kerkorian said he had been told by his attorneys that a call had been received from DaimlerChrysler headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, offering settlement talks. But a DaimlerChrysler spokesman denied that. Kerkorian lawyer Terry Christensen also rejected any possible settlement out of hand.

“If you want to settle with Kirk, you don’t call him a liar,” Christensen said.

The courtroom drama came hours after Canadian-born James Holden, the last non-German executive to head Chrysler before his ouster as group president in late 2000, appeared to deal a serious blow to Kerkorian by testifying that he backed the deal creating DaimlerChrysler and considered it fair.

Holden, who was privy to discussions leading up to Chrysler’s $36-billion link-up with Daimler, answered “yes” when asked whether he believed in 1998 that one of the biggest deals in auto history was a merger and not an acquisition.

He was then asked by Judge Joseph Farnan whether he thought the chief architect of the deal, DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Juergen Schrempp, also considered it a merger as the deal played out behind the scenes five years ago.

“I don’t believe he would have gone through with this if he didn’t believe it was a merger,” Holden said.

Kerkorian, Chrysler’s largest shareholder at the time, is demanding more than $1 billion in damages on grounds that Daimler hid its true intentions to avoid paying a higher premium for Chrysler’s shares.

But Holden said he thought shareholders had been awarded an “appropriate premium” for the joining of the two companies.