Over at the new Biz Buzz blog, my colleague Doug Wong asks whether Cerberus Capital’s name is a bad omen for Chrysler,  the latest addition to Cerberus’ collection of companies. In Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the gates to Hades.

A BusinessWeek  profile from 2005 has the best explanation I’ve seen of the private equity fund’s name. Stephen A. Feinberg started Cerberus in 1992 as a small “vulture capital” fund.    It invested in companies that were, as the name implies, at death’s door. But he kept the name even as the fund diversified well beyond troubled companies. BusinessWeek reports:

Feinberg liked the idea that one of the dog’s heads was always on watch, just as his firm would guard its clients’ investments around the clock, says J. Ezra Merkin, managing partner of hedge-fund firm Gabriel Capital Group.

…. But as he pursued more and more deals, he found that his hard-boiled image often scared off targets. Sticking with the name Cerberus  – despite the pleas of bankers to change it to something less frightening  – didn’t help matters. Neither did launching a fund called Styx, named after the river that separates the living from the dead in Hades. Says an adviser who has worked with Feinberg: “When people hear that Cerberus is looking at a deal, they groan.”

The UAW isn’t exactly groaning. Union President Ron Gettelfinger held a press conference to say he was OK with Cerberus’ purchase of Chrysler. He said the buyout folks hadn’t asked him for any concessions. But a few weeks ago, Gettelfinger was telling people that he didn’t want a private-equity firm to gain control of Chrysler.   Bloomberg is speculating about what’s behind the about-face:

His reversal riled some union colleagues. It also suggests he was told that Chrysler won’t be dismantled, labor analysts said today.

“Cerberus must have given the UAW assurances that there won’t be wholesale cutbacks, that they plan to operate Chrysler as an ongoing manufacturing firm rather than splitting it up to extract value,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor analyst at the University of California at Berkeley.

The UAW has to enter contract talks with Chrysler, GM and Ford this summer. And you can bet that, assurances or no assurances, all three struggling automakers will be asking for major concessions.