Delay for VW in plans for MAN board
VOLKSWAGEN suffered a setback in its efforts to create Europe’s biggest truckmaker yesterday, as a European regulator pushed it to drop plans to take control of MAN’s supervisory board.
The German carmaker, which has made a takeover offer for MAN that expires tomorrow, had wanted several of its managers to take seats on MAN’s board at the truckmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Munich.
The move is part of VW chairman Ferdinand Piech’s plan to create Europe’s biggest truck maker by combining MAN and Sweden’s Scania to take on world number one Daimler.
But the EC said VW’s grasp for control would breach merger rules and told Europe’s biggest carmaker to wait for regulatory approval.
VW said it was withdrawing its proposal to appoint VW chief executive Martin Winterkorn, finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch and trucks chief Jochem Heizmann to MAN’s board.
The group said it was in talks with the European Commission and was confident it could submit the formal application for merger control clearance in the coming weeks.
VW launched a low-ball bid valuing MAN at about €13.8bn (£12.3bn) last month, aiming to raise its stake in the truckmaker to 35-40 per cent of voting rights for now to get regulatory approval for closer cooperation between MAN and Scania without buying the whole company.
Eventually, VW envisages saving about €400m of costs in procurement, development and production by setting up a combined trucks group, but it has not yet provided details.
MAN chief executive Georg Pachta-Reyhofen said he sees substantial synergies in any cooperation with VW and Scania, which will allow the truck maker to expand its range to include vehicles weighing in at less than 7.5 tonnes.