GILROY
– Due to a glut of interest in buying the Indian Motorcycle
Company, the organization handling the auction has postponed the
bid deadline by a week, to Oct. 24.
GILROY – Due to a glut of interest in buying the Indian Motorcycle Company, the organization handling the auction has postponed the bid deadline by a week, to Oct. 24.
As of Friday, 60 potential buyers had approached the Credit Managers Association of California about buying Indian Motorcycle, according to Indian Chairman Frank O’Connell. About half of these had entered confidentiality agreements to get detailed Indian business data that would help them figure how much to offer, O’Connell added. That’s up from 17 confidentiality agreements a week before.
CMA expects to receive multiple bids but hadn’t received any by Friday afternoon, Estate Manager Michael Joncich said.
The only prospective buyer to go public has been former Indian President/CEO Rey Sotelo, who is part of a diverse investment coalition that plans to bid on Indian. Sotelo steered Indian to Gilroy when the historic motorcycle maker was reborn in 1998 after 45 years of being defunct. His Gilroy-based California Motorcycle Company, begun in 1995, merged into Indian at the time. Quite a few of the 380 Indian workers laid off when the company shut down on Sept. 19 had previously been CMC employees. Sotelo resigned from Indian in 2002.
Sotelo has said his company would build Indian motorcycles in Gilroy again if it wins the bid, hiring back at least some of the former workforce.
