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Porsche yesterday made a token offer for Scania, the Swedish truckmaker, but reaffirmed it did not intend to succeed with this mandatory bid.

The German sports carmaker sparked this general offer after it increased its stake in Volkswagen to 50.76 per cent two weeks ago. Europe’s largest carmaker, which is now controlled by Porsche, owns 69 per cent of Scania.

Porsche offered the minimum price of SKr68.52 per A share and SKr67.10 per B share. Both offers are below the stock’s Friday close and yesterday’s trading price.

Porsche yesterday reiterated it “did not have a strategic interest in buying Scania shares”. Scania said its board of executives would give a recommendation on the share offer on February 3, one week before Porsche’s bid will expire.

VW not only owns a majority in Scania but also a controlling stake of 30 per cent in its German rival, MAN. Industry executives expect the latter and Scania to merge, probably this year. Following MAN’s sale of VW’s truck assets, it is still unclear what the complicated structure would look like

The article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de9ac2a2-e692-11dd-8e4f-0000779fd2ac.html

Initial story: Porsche launches mandatory offer for Scania

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — MAN AG, Europe’s third-largest truckmaker, has no plans to bid for Swedish rival Scania AB as it focuses on expanding in emerging markets including China, Chief Executive Officer Hakan Samuelsson said.

MAN owns 11.3 percent of Scania’s shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and said on Dec. 29 it bought options allowing it to increase its voting rights in the company to 20 percent from 17 percent. MAN is 30 percent owned by German automaker Volkswagen AG, which in turn has a further 69 percent
of Scania’s voting rights.

MAN has started operations in India and Brazil and is considering expanding into China after the worldwide recession halted a boom in heavy-truck sales fueled by growth in eastern Europe, Samuelsson said in an interview in Abu Dhabi today.
Munich-based MAN agreed Dec. 15 to acquire Brazil’s largest truckmaker from Volkswagen, its first major investment in South America.

Still, a bid for Scania “is not something we are considering,” and increasing voting rights in the company isn’t “any change strategically,” Samuelsson said.

The slump in European heavy-truck sales accelerated in November, with deliveries falling 28 percent, according to the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers Association. MAN plans to shut plants for about 50 days during the first half of 2009 to curtail output by 30 percent amid job losses at Europe’s
three-biggest truckmakers.

‘Industrial Logic’

“We believe in the industrial logic of an integration of MAN and Scania,” Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, wrote in a research report on Jan. 8, estimating a merger could save the companies as much as 500 million euros ($674 million) a year.

Porsche SE, the Stuttgart, Germany-based maker of luxury sports cars, is separately required to bid for Scania due to its acquisition on Jan. 5 of a majority stake in Volkswagen.

In spite of the difficult conditions in the auto industry, MAN hasn’t changed its estimates for 2008 performance, according to Samuelsson. “We will see turnover that will be slightly over 2007 and profit margins will be close to 12 percent,” he said.