VW Offers $9.2 Billion for Remaining Scania Stake
Volkswagen AG has offered 6.7 billion euros ($9.2 billion) to Scania AB shareholders to buy the remaining 37.4% of the Swedish truck maker, part of a plan to become a global heavy-truck manufacturer, Bloomberg News reported.
VW previously launched an attempt to completely take over MAN SE, a Germany-based truck maker of which it owns 75%. Shareholders of MAN have filed lawsuits seeking more money, Bloomberg said.
“It’s incomprehensible that they haven’t been able to enforce cooperation at Scania despite all the investments in the trucks operations so far,” Juergen Pieper, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Bankhaus Metzler, told Bloomberg. “It was a mistake to keep Scania on a very long leash.”
VW is trying to revive a seven-year-old plan to become a global truck maker, competing with Volvo AB and Daimler AG, the world’s largest truck maker, Bloomberg said. The company has estimated that it will gain $849 million in profits annually from cost savings between the brands.
Scania’s board appointed a committee of non-VW shareholders to consider the offer, it said. Swedish pension fund AP4, a minority shareholder, said that the price offered by VW is not the best in the long term, while Skandia Liv financial group, another minority shareholder, told the Associated Press it would vote against the offer.
VW announced the offer Feb. 21 at a supervisory board meeting. It also announced that it will hire Andreas Renschler, former truck chief at Daimler, to head its truck brands beginning in February 2015.
VW is Europe’s largest carmaker. In addition to the VW marque, it owns Automobil Holding SE, Audi AG, Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. and Bentley Motors Limited, among other brands.
