Frankfurt: Volkswagen still aims for closer ties between its truck making subsidiaries MAN of Germany and Sweden’s Scania, reports Reuters. The companies today deny a report that highlighted a lack of progress and said the plan had been dropped, says Reuters.
Analysts said VW’s plans for the two firms it controls were proceeding slowly, suggesting a full merger was probably some way off.
VW has said it sees substantial synergies between 55.9%-owned MAN and Scania in which it holds 70%, as it seeks to take on global market leader Daimler and number two Volvo.
On Thursday, Swedish paper Dagens Industri reported unnamed sources as saying VW chairman Ferdinand Piech was now no longer pushing for closer cooperation as long as Scania continued to be the highly profitable business it is.
A spokesman for Scania said working groups between Scania and VW on areas of cooperation were still going on. “We don’t really recognize what was reported in the newspaper,” Scania spokesman Hans-Ake Danielsson said, referring to the report.
“We have had working groups with VW since last year looking into possible areas of cooperaton… These talks are on their way and they are going on in a constructive and positive way,” he said.
The cooperation covers axles, gearboxes, commodity purchasing and joint research on hybrid components for heavy trucks and buses.
