FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German carmaker Volkswagen
formally launched its bid for MAN on Tuesday, in a move toward creating Europe’s biggest truckmaker.
VW’s chairman Ferdinand Piech has long been itching to combine MAN and Sweden’s Scania to take on the world’s biggest truck maker, Daimler, and number two Volvo, but has been hampered by anti-trust issues and resistance from Scania.
VW aims first to raise its stake in MAN to 35-40 percent of voting rights from just over 30 percent now, which is just enough to get regulatory approval for closer cooperation between MAN and Scania without buying the whole company.
VW made a deliberately low offer of 95 euros per ordinary share for MAN on Tuesday, 1.8 percent below the current market value of 96.69 euros per share.
Under German takeover rules if few investors accept the mandatory offer, which values MAN at about 13.8 billion euros, VW can then go on to gradually
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