According to reports from the German newspaper Die Welt, General Motors will ink a deal next week to sell a 55 percent stake in Opel to Magna International Inc, a Canadian supplier, and its Russian partner firm, Sberbank.

The deal would have been signed this week, but apparently the European Commissions and Germany are still hammering out the details of a government aid package designed to restructure both Opel and its British counterpart, Vauxhall.

As an aspect of the deal, 50,000 Opel employees will receive a 10 percent stake in the new company in exchange for cost-cutting concessions. General Motors will retain a 35 percent holding in the company.

The buyers, Magna and Sberbank, have pledged to invest 500 million euros in Opel, positioning the brand for a push into the Russian market. Some critics fear that the state aid sought to cinch the agreement is being misused for political purposes, but Opel workers have lobbied hard to save their jobs and to avoid plant closures in multiple European nations.

Provisional agreements regarding the worker owned element of the deal have been concluded with the appropriate unions in Germany, the UK, Poland, Austria and Belgium, but talks are still underway in Spain where organizers feel the proposed job cuts at the Zaragoza plant in northeast Spain are too severe.