China Finally Buys A Western Car Company
After a year of false starts in which Chinese car and manufacturing interests have tried to buy Hummer and have kicked the tires at Volvo. a mainland firm, Beijing Automotive, will buy most of the assets of Saab. The Wall…
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the transaction will include the intellectual property for two sedans, the 9-3 and 9-5, and some manufacturing facilities. GM is the seller. Chinese state banks will put up the money.
The move is not very impressive. China wants to enter the international car business and move beyond the successful enterprises within its own borders. To carry out that task it is going to have to buy a firm bigger than Hummer or Saab. China may be able to export its own vehicles, but it could take years to create dealer networks in the US and Europe. The fit and finish of Chinese-made cars is not considered up to the standards of most Western buyers.
Fiat may falter in its turnaround of Chrysler and run low on money. That may be China’s only really significant option for picking up immediate market share in the US.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.