去年圣诞节之前两天，吉利(Geely)宣布，已就收购沃尔沃(Volvo)汽车与福特(Ford)谈妥了商业条款。不过，双方直到现在才真正达成了协议。这家总部位于杭州的制造商要到今年第三季度，才能接手沃尔沃的资产，届时与该公司表明收购兴趣已相隔两年。
这种从容不迫的进度很能说明中国作为收购方的特点。收购价格（代表相当于账面价值70%的企业价值）和交易结构（包括2亿美元的卖方融资）表明，福特非常急于抛出这家亏损的瑞典汽车制造企业。但吉利面临着两大障碍。首先是知识产权。中国初创企业（不光是汽车制造商）凭借一种简单而有效的战略取得成功：从老牌的全球制造商获得设计和零部件，然后对其进行"逆向工程"。把福特拥有的技术与沃尔沃拥有的技术分开已经够难的了；卖方需要得到买家的保证，即它在买下相关技术后，会尊重其知识产权。
第二个障碍是吉利演变中的地位。这家成立于1986年的民营制造商，迄今一直在中国经济规划者的直接控制范围之外增长。但此笔迄今为止中国最大的汽车业交易，并不完全是一笔私营部门的买卖。吉利将投入16亿美元股本的大约一半；其余资金将来自不同的省政府，吉利将在这些省建厂，装配面向本土市场的沃尔沃汽车。除此之外，吉利还将从一个由国有银行牵头的财团得到大约9亿美元营运资本，使其能够撑过瑞典传统的夏季停产。吉利并不在中国去年公布的8家政府指定的行业整合者之列。如今，该公司实际上成为了这样的整合者。它收购沃尔沃的交易，并不能明确说明"国进民退"趋势的盛衰。但界限正在日渐模糊。
Lex专栏是由FT评论员联合撰写的短评，对全球经济与商业进行精辟分析
译者/和风
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001031973
Two days before Christmas, Geely announced it had settled commercial terms with Ford on the acquisition of Volvo cars. It is only now, however, that the two sides actually have a deal. The Hangzhou-based manufacturer will not get its hands on the assets until the third quarter, two years after registering interest.
The leisurely time scale says a lot about China as an acquirer. The price (representing an enterprise value about 70 per cent of book value) and deal structure (including $200m of vendor finance) show that Ford was pretty desperate to offload the loss-making Swedish automaker. But Geely faced two big hurdles. The first was intellectual property. Chinese start-ups, not just in cars, have flourished by pursuing a simple but effective strategy: take designs and parts from established global manufacturers, then reverse-engineer them. Disentangling technologies owned by Ford from those owned by Volvo was hard enough; the seller needed assurances from the buyer that it would then respect them.
The second hurdle was Geely's evolving status. As a private manufacturer, founded in 1986, the company has grown up outside the direct control of China's economic planners. But the country's biggest auto deal to date is not a strictly private transaction. Geely is putting in about half of the $1.6bn of equity; the rest is coming from provincial governments that will build plants to assemble Volvos for the local market. On top of that, Geely is getting about $900m in working capital to tide it over Sweden's traditional summer production shutdown, courtesy of a consortium led by state-owned banks. Geely was not on the list of eight state-appointed industry consolidators last year. Now, in effect, it is. Its deal to buy Volvo is not an open-and-shut case of guo jin min tui � the state advances while the private sector retreats. But the boundaries are increasingly blurred.
没有评论:
发表评论