You mentioned here that you are starting to recognize the benefit from the VEBA plan. Did that already happen in Q3? Was that included on slide 15? And why are you calling this out as a special item then?
Peter Daniel
We are calling it out as a special item because there is a large one-time curtailment gain that is not reflecting the ongoing performance. So that’s the reason that we’re calling it out as a special.
Christopher Ceraso - Credit Suisse
Is it the gain that you’re going to call out? Maybe I misinterpreted it. It sounded like on an ongoing basis you were going to call out the cost savings associated with this plan as a special item.
Peter Daniel
Going forward until we fully implement it at the end of ‘09 we are going to call changes as special because effectively we’ve locked out the obligation. So there will be ups and downs and we’re going to call them all as special because we don’t have any ongoing obligation.
Christopher Ceraso - Credit Suisse
Okay and then on slide 15 you showed savings from pension OPEB for the third quarter was $400.0 million. Did that include some of the effective of VEBA yield?
Neil Schloss
Yes, a little bit.
Christopher Ceraso - Credit Suisse
It was not called out. Or did you call that out?
Peter Daniel
Up until August 29 where we had the agreement ratified by the courts, up until that point it was part of normal, past August 29 that we’ve treated everything as a special.
Christopher Ceraso - Credit Suisse
Okay last question, it looks like Visteon may run out of money at some point in the not too distant future. What is Ford’s position with regard to further financial assistance to help them restructure?
Lewis Booth
We can’t comment on that.
Operator |