GM Seen Needing $3 Billion Fund to Address Defect Deaths

General Motors Co. will probably create a fund of as much as $3 billion to pay claims associated with an ignition-switch flaw the automaker said is linked to the deaths of 12 people, a Barclays analyst wrote this week.

GM shares may see a rebound if the largest U.S. automaker announces such a plan before Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra testifies at U.S. House and Senate hearings April 1 and April 2, Barclays’s analyst Brian Johnson said. GM will probably create the fund even though the automaker is shielded, under its July 2009 U.S.-backed bankruptcy reorganization, from liabilities of the old GM, which sold the cars.