Commentaries

Saab and Volvo – made in China?

At this rate it might not be long before Sweden’s once mighty Volvo and Saab car marques come with “Made in China” stamped on the chassis.

After failing in the auction of Opel, Beijing Automotive Industry Holding (BAIC) is set to take a minority stake in supercar maker Koenigsegg, which is bidding to take over all of GM’s Saab. Meanwhile, Geely Automotive’s parent company Geely Holding Group Co plans to bid for Ford’s Volvo.

Chinese carmakers have had mixed fortunes in their attempts to buy overseas brands. SAIC Motor Corp snapped up 51 percent of Korea’s Ssangyong Motor Co in 2004 but made a hash of running an overseas operation and was later forced to write down the investment.

SAIC had more success with the acquisition of the historic British MG Rover. In the case of Rover,  SAIC simply boxed up the machinery, stripped the plants and took all the technology back to China where it produces the cars of the same design far more cheaply. But in MG’s case, the sportscar continues to roll off the assembly line at the UK’s Longbridge plant.

Technological asset stripping rather than a commitment to build cars in Sweden is what some there fear will be in store for Volvo and Saab should the Chinese firms succeed with their bids. But analysts point out that in the case of Saab, the technology is owned by GM

Stockholm is doing all it can to avoid giving either of its iconic carmakers state financing. If it ends up giving any loan guarantees, it will also want to look very closely at the fine print to make sure it does not sign away its carmaking heritage and the jobs which go with it.

from The Great Debate:

Forget Microsoft, Yahoo’s value is overseas

-- Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --

The fate of Yahoo Inc has become intertwined in the public's imagination with the success or failure of its dealings with Microsoft Corp in recent years.

That's despite the fact that as much as 70 percent of the value investors put on Yahoo's depressed shares are tied up in its international assets or cash holdings -- factors that have nothing to do with Microsoft.

Yahoo's operations trade for just $5 to $6 per share out of its current $15 share price, once you exclude its Asian investments and the value of its cash. Its hidden assets in Japan and Chinese affiliates -- Yahoo Japan Corp and China's Alibaba Group -- alone are worth around $6 to $7 per share.

The trouble is that Yahoo needs to find a way to cash out of its increasingly rocky relationship with Alibaba Group, in which it holds a 39 percent stake after it pulled back from operating its own business in China in 2005.

Yahoo's best chance here may come next year if Alibaba succeeds with a second IPO of its Taobao.com consumer ecommerce site, building on the success of the 2007 IPO of Alibaba.com, now valued at more than US$13 billion on the Hong Kong exchange.

Truth be told, Yahoo's huge success in building the biggest U.S. Internet media destination never translated very well overseas, despite the early foray into Asia that left it with lucrative assets in Japan and China. These passive investments came to substitute for a global operating strategy.

Apple-Google learn corporate governance 1.0

The resignation of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple’s board should come as no surprise to anyone with an inkling of what corporate governance means.

But then Silicon Valley’s idea of corporate boards has long consisted of cozy, interlocking directorships which would be considered collusion in most other industries.

Google’s CEO is not leaving Apple’s board voluntarily. He is only stepping down in response to the increased government scrutiny of obvious potential conflicts of interest between the two companies.

Yet regulators shouldn’t be content with Schmidt’s departure. The truth is that Apple and Google have been heading into the same markets for years. A veritable chain of overlapping business ties remain in place even if the most obvious formal link is now broken. (more…)