Frank Stronach has taken many risks in the 55 years since he washed dishes for a living after his arrival in Canada from his native Austria. But none is on the scale of his bid for General Motors’ European division.

Magna International, the automotive parts maker that grew out of the small tool and die business Mr Stronach set up in Toronto in the late 1950s, has emerged as the leading contender to take over GM Europe, centred on Opel and Vauxhall.

Magna, with Russia’s Sberbank, has offered €700m ($991m) for 55 per cent of Opel. It also on Friday came up with €300m of emergency funding.

The 76-year-old Mr Stronach – who was born Franz Strohsack – has often been criticised for treating Magna and its affiliated companies as a personal fiefdom.

Thanks to multiple voting shares, he remains Magna’s controlling shareholder even though he owns a relatively small portion of the equity.

Magna paid almost $85m in 2006 to acquire two golf courses from an ­entertainment affiliate that has been North America’s biggest horse-race track owner.

Over the years, Mr Stronach has also ventured into restaurants, magazines and an energy drink, with varying degrees of success.

Controversy has swirled around his links with Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch. A company controlled by Mr Deripaska bought a $1.5bn stake in Magna that effectively gave the two men joint control.

Mr Deripaska’s stake was widely seen as the first step in a creeping takeover. Among the benefits for Mr Stronach was millions of dollars a year in extra dividends without boosting his small equity stake.

However, under mounting financial pressure Mr Deripaska was forced to sell his investment last September to the bank that financed the deal.

Mr Stronach’s typical response to critics of Magna’s corporate governance is that they do not need to own Magna shares if they do not want to.

While the bid for Opel may be risky, it covers ground that Magna knows well. The company, based in its sprawling office park north of Toronto, is one of the world’s biggest carmakers, with revenues in 2008 of $23.7bn and about 75,000 employees.

In spite of a $200m loss in the first three months of this year, Magna has one of the strongest balance sheets in an industry where others are falling like flies. Two other big North American suppliers – Visteon and Metaldyne – filed for bankruptcy protection this week.

Magna is best known as a parts maker, but it also assembles cars for several manufacturers – including Chrysler and BMW – at a plant in Austria. One industry consultant says that the contract-manufacturing operation has shown that relatively small numbers of cars can be assembled profitably.

Magna’s success is often ascribed to Mr Stronach’s emphasis on an entrepreneurial culture.

Its operations are ­decentralised, giving a high measure of autonomy to divisional and plant managers. For many years, Mr Stronach resisted the presence of trade unions in Magna plants, although several are now union operations.

Under Magna’s “corporate constitution”, 10 per cent of pre-tax profit is distributed to employees through share purchases and cash. Some Magna workers have become far wealthier than their unionised counterparts.