Comments on: Geely gunning for Volvo

By: aron

aron — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:52:41 +0000

@ GO RED: Believe me, I’m hardly biased against China. It’s just that it’s frustrating to see their fledgling industry taking (what seems to be) the wrong moves. In my opinion, SAIC’s idea for acquiring Rover was done properly. They avoided a complete takeover, but bought IP and assets by bits and pieces, such as the power train, chassis tech, R&D centers… no point in paying for all the other overhead. This was a far more efficient route than what Geely is trying to do here. How often do horizontal mergers actually succeed anyways? Lots of companies do it, very few actually succeed. Just look at all the mining giants who are floundering in debt because of their absolutely reckless acquisitions.
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And I totally concur with the sentiment on the quality of comments here and elsewhere. Mostly just heresay, outright racism, and other forms of Sinophobia. It’s disgusting.

By: Go Red

Go Red — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:41:56 +0000

Geely or any other Chinese car company should acquire the western auto companies that have the technology and manufacturing and logistics know how that they still lack. Just out of curisity, how many posters here are actually based in China. I live in New York City. Most of you seem to be jealous of the Chinese auto companies inevitable rise in the world. Think of where Toyota was 40 years ago or Hyundai was 20 years ago. I usually LMAO when I read many of the comments here and the China section of Autoblog.

By: mememe

mememe — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:28:23 +0000

ye I agree with ARON. Chinese companies like Geely are really impetuous.

By: tom

tom — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:37:53 +0000

geely is a crappy car company that will ruin volvo.

By: aron

aron — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:53:13 +0000

Bad idea imo; they should try to grow organically rather than trying to 一步升天. They’ll have cultural clashes, redundant management structure, redundant infrastructure, and probably every other corporate problem you could envision. Plus, it’ll all be compounded by the fact it used to be run by Ford… hardly a model company. Of course I understand it’s probably for the sake of prestige, technology transfer and a gain in market share, but meh, those aren’t typically good ideas for M&A. Not like their bankers will tell them that though! Geely should stick to buying assets that Ford is divesting rather than acquiring the entire company. It’d probably be way cheaper to just pick up some R&D departments Ford wants to close down than being stuck with the bill for all the rest of the company.