The directors of General Motors met for dinner last Monday in advance of an eagerly anticipated board meeting the following day. It was a chance for them to get to know one another.

The American government appointed an entirely new board after bailing out GM in the summer, and the people at the top of the world’s second-biggest carmaker are still finding their way with the industry and each other.

There wasn’t much time for chit-chat. New or not, the board had to make a historic decision — whether to cut GM’s ties with Europe, and its claim to be a global car company, by selling Opel and Vauxhall.

Fritz Henderson, the chief executive, explained the deal, in which GM would sell a controlling stake to Magna, a car-parts maker, and Sberbank, a Russian financial institution, with the help of €4.5 billion (£4 billion) in loans from Germany and smaller contributions from Britain and Spain.

Henderson made no firm recommendation. After all, the board had approved the deal in principle and was expected to give the green light.

Except it didn’t. Immediately after the meeting, GM announced that it would keep Opel / Vauxhall, saying the business was now judged vital to product and technology development strategy.

The decision provoked fury in Germany, where the Magna plan had been supported because it promised fewer job losses. Henderson had to call Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, with the news — she was in Washington to see President Barack Obama.

The workforce of Opel in Germany, some 25,000, took to the streets within 48 hours. “The strikes beginning in Germany will be repeated across Europe,” said Klaus Franz, head of the Opel works council in Germany. “The next move from General Motors will be to blackmail the governments and employees of Europe to finance their unworkable plans for restructuring Opel.”

Others joined the attack. “This behaviour of General Motors shows the ugly face of unbridled capitalism,” said Jürgen Rüttgers, governor of North Rhine Westphalia and a leading figure in the German government. The Opel factory at Bochum, in his state, is high on the list of possible closures with the loss of 5,000 jobs. Germany’s bestselling newspaper, Bild Zeitung, described GM as “bullshitters”.

The reaction of the British workforce was the opposite. Unions here gave GM’s decision a warm reception, having always been nervous about Magna’s commitment to the factories at Ellesmere Port on Merseyside and at Luton.

“We want Vauxhall to be part of a giant global company, one that is now restructuring successfully thanks to Obama’s intervention. It’s far better to remain within the experienced GM group than be spun off to Magna,” said Tony Woodley of the Unite trade union.

John Smith, the executive who has led the negotiations for GM, said the Magna deal had always been complex, with two investor groups rather than one.

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