That was the approach GM's senior management took with Opel during World War II. Opel wasn't nationalised; it continued trading and did business as usual with the German government of the day, just with less direct involvement from Detroit.

While it worked out very well indeed for GM in a commercial sense in that they retained control of the business, it continued to be profitable and the U.S. Government paid for damage to their factories due to Allied bombing, history has a less favourable view of the individual people involved.