Dutch billionaire Marcel Boekhoorn says he’s not the secret financier backing Spyker’s offer to buy GM’s Swedish carmaker.

The 50-year-old Dutch investment mogul turns down all suggestions that he should be the secret backer of sports-car maker Spyker’s bid for General Motors’ ailing Swedish auto firm Saab.

“Marcel Boekhoorn affirms that he is not involved in Spyker Cars’ purchase of Saab”, his secretary wrote in an e-mail to the TT news wire.

Marcel Boekhoorn, owner of 3.84 percent of Spyker and adviser to its executive officer Victor Muller, was said to have upped his investments in the Dutch carmaker. The news was seen as very positive as GM requires that Spyker chairman and biggest investor, Russian businessman Vladimir Antonov, exit the company.

Hopes that loss-making Saab could be rescued flickered back into life on Monday as Swedish state television’s Rapport said that GM had accepted Spyker’s offer and that the Swedish government had agreed to guarantee loans from European Investment Bank for the deal. Both GM and the Swedish government denied the rumors.

"Negotiations are ongoing and the spirit is positive, but we are very, very tired," Spyker chief executive Victor Muller told Reuters while in Stockholm.

Swedish trade union newspaper Dagens Arbete claimed Monday that Marcel Boekhoorn was the new financier behind Spyker. Last month Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf wrote that Boekhoorn, who bought a 5.7 percent stake in Spyker in 2007, may be the man backing up the deal as he has been in several meetings with the Spyker management recently.