I say PR move. Management wants to maintain the high moral ground that it is exploring all options. But nothing will come of it.

And with good reason. Any tie-up with Nissan or Renault does nothing to solve GM's immediate problem that it is bleeding cash due to legacy costs while losing market share.

And a tie-up with Renault? Good grief -- why?

The $64,000 question:

Why is Ghosn even remotely interested in jumping into the GM briar patch?

It's really the old face of shareholder activism that, for better or worse, had something to do with the performance of the company. It's in the tradition of takeover people like Sam Heymann or Carl Icahn or Saul Steinberg or Ross Perot (in the case of GM) or Kerkorian himself (when he made his earlier play for Chrysler) who maintain or acquire a substantial stake in the company and have no outcome in mind other than a return qua shareholder (granted, whether that is only the "raider" as shareholder in the greenmail instances, or all shareholders). I would call these the "money activists."

That is to be distinguished from Rule 14a-8 shareholder activism on issues like classified boards or poison pills, where the "activist" holds a limited number of shares, and seeks to affect the governance practices of the corporation, either because in theory the practice has some correlation to value (takeover defenses) or for political, including wealth redistribution, reasons (the activities of union pension funds). I would call these the "paper activists."

While both Kerkorian and Professor Bebchuk are activists, I'm not sure that there is any relationship between money and paper activists other than one of the theoretical goals of the paper activists is to make it easier for the money activists to maximize shareholder through the market for control.

So to equate how GM reacts to Kerkorian with how it might react to a shareholder proposal is apples and oranges (yes, they are both fruit).