Volkswagen AG yesterday increased its control over Soedertaelje, Sweden-based Scania AB to 35.31% of the voting rights from 34%, the Wolfsburg, Germany-based carmaker said in a statement today. It purchased 400,000 additional Scania A shares. The company also said it received an exemption last month from Swedish regulators to increase its Scania stake to 49.99% of the votes without having to make a takeover bid. Generally a holding of 30% or more forces a company to make a takeover offer under Swedish law.
„The shareholdings in MAN AG and Scania aim to safeguard the strategic interest of the group in the commercial vehicles business and are adequate for finding a friendly and mutually agreeable solution” to combine the companies, Volkswagen said in a separate statement. The carmaker last week raised its MAN stake to 29.9% from 20%, gaining leverage in the attempt to merge its own truck division with MAN and Scania.
The combined company would become Europe’s largest truckmaker, passing DaimlerChrysler AG and Volvo AB. MAN announced yesterday that Volkswagen Chairman Ferdinand Piech and two other Volkswagen managers will join MAN’s 20-member supervisory board, which is similar to an American board of directors. Separately Scania said yesterday that Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn would take over as that truckmaker’s board chairman.
Winterkorn replaces his predecessor as CEO, Bernd Pischetsrieder, who will leave the board, Scania said. Volkswagen managers Hans Dieter Poetsch and Francisco Garcia Sanz will join Winterkorn on the Scania board. A deal would end almost six months of wrangling since Munich-based MAN’s surprise hostile bid for Scania in September. MAN withdrew its €10.3 billion ($13.6 billion) bid for Scania on January 23 following opposition from Volkswagen and Investor AB, Scania’s two largest shareholders. Volkswagen announced October 4 that it had purchased 15.1% of MAN’s shares as a „strategic move.”
The company said about a month later that it had increased the holding to „around” 20% and had regulatory clearance to buy as much as 29.9%. Truckmakers have posted record earnings as eastern European customers expand. Scania has forecast the European truck market will increase by more than a third to 390,000 vehicles within seven years, driven by eastern Europe and Russia. (Bloomberg)
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