Chrysler rushed to clinch deals with Fiat and a fractious group of lenders on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy ahead of a government-imposed April 30 restructuring deadline.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter, those efforts hit a major roadblock late in the day as talks between the U.S. Treasury Department and lenders collapsed.

This meant bankruptcy for Chrysler was “all but certain”, the report said, citing those sources.

Earlier in the evening, U.S. President Barack Obama said concessions by Chrysler’s unions and its major bank lenders had made him more hopeful than a month ago that the struggling automaker could be made viable.

But he added it was still not clear if Chrysler would need to seek bankruptcy protection to cement concessions from its lenders and move ahead with a planned alliance with Italy’s Fiat.

“The details have not yet been finalized so I don’t want to jump the gun, but I’m feeling more optimistic than I was about the possibilities about that getting done,” Obama said at a news conference.

The White House has set a series of aggressive targets for Chrysler in order to justify another $6 billion (4 billion pounds) in investment on top of $4 billion in emergency loans the government has extended since the start of the year.

The No. 3 U.S. automaker has won cost-cutting concessions from its unions in the United States and Canada and is on the brink of closing its deal with Fiat, a person involved in those negotiations told.