VW Secures Backing to Complete Scania Bid, Bolster Heavy-Trucks Division
Volkswagen AG secured enough backing to move forward with its $9.2 billion bid for Scania AB, removing the last major obstacle to a nearly decadelong effort to forge an integrated heavy-trucks unit.
Volkswagen, which already controls two-thirds of Scania, now has shareholder support giving it 90.47% of the Swedish truck maker, Wolfsburg, Germany-based VW said May 13.
That pushes VW past the 90% threshold needed under Swedish law to force out remaining owners and delist Scania.
When it announced the plan to buy out Scania in February, Volkswagen said it would hire Andreas Renschler, the former chief of Daimler Trucks, to head its global truck operation, beginning in February 2015.
VW, Europe’s largest automaker, has been working to fully integrate Scania to deepen three-way cooperation among the Swedish company, Munich-based MAN SE, which VW also controls, and its own commercial-vehicles marque.
The Scania purchase caps an effort that began in 2006 to create a global truck division that can compete with leaders Daimler AG and Volvo AB.
“The commercial-vehicle business is increasingly becoming the second strong pillar for the group,” CEO Martin Winterkorn said May 13 at Volkswagen’s annual meeting in Hannover, Germany. “We can now take the next logical and consistent step in our strategy to strengthen the operational integration.”
