BERLIN, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. auto giant General Motors is prepared to sell the ailing German automaker Opel to a consortium of Austrian-Canadian Magna and Russia's Sberbank, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.

The GM board of governors held a meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Detroit to discuss four possible options of the Opel deal: to sell it to Magna-Sberbank or Belgium's RHJ, to keep Opel within GM, or to proceed with Opel's bankruptcy.

Merkel said the GM board decided to sell Opel to Magna in the format discussed and welcomed by the German government.

The German government, Magna International and Sberbank reached an agreement on May 30 for the consortium to take over Opel. Russian truck maker GAZ, owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, is acting as industrial partner in the deal.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who met Merkel on August 14 in the southern Russian city of Sochi, said the Magna-Sberbank purchase of Opel would improve Russia's resistance to future crises.