German auto group Schaeffler swoops for Vitesco with €3bn bid

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Germany’s billionaire Schaeffler family has made a bid to take over Vitesco Technologies as the heirs to the auto supplier seek to boost their presence in electric vehicles.

The Bavarian car parts maker Schaeffler, which is controlled by Georg Schaeffler and his mother Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, on Monday said it would offer €91 per share to buy Vitesco — a fifth more than its closing price on Friday — valuing the rival auto group at roughly €3bn.

Shares in Vitesco, which was spun out of supplier Continental two years ago, soared 20 per cent on the news, hitting €91 on Monday morning in Frankfurt.

The Schaefflers, one of Germany’s wealthiest families, already own 49.9 per cent of shares in EV specialist Vitesco as well as 46 per cent of Continental, which makes tyres and other car parts.

The family, which has made its money from Germany’s role as a world-leading carmaker, is uniquely exposed to the industry’s historic switch to EVs — a field in which China has quickly gained dominance.

Schaeffler last year announced it would lay off 2 per cent of its workforce, about 1,300 people, as it warned of a glut in components for combustion engines.

Klaus Rosenfeld, Schaeffler’s chief executive, said on Monday a successful takeover would mean the company would be able to offer a “full suite” of solutions both in the EV segment and for traditional combustion engine cars.

“There will be even more competition in Europe from Chinese carmakers,” he said. “Guess what, they’ll need suppliers here on the ground.”

Part of the reason behind the takeover, which Schaeffler said would by 2029 lead to synergies worth €600mn a year, was a desire to “simplify” the company’s shareholder structure, with the family giving up its control over voting shares.

“For my mother and myself as family shareholders, giving away voting rights is a decisive step that in the best interest of the company we have weighed carefully,” Georg Schaeffler said in a statement.

The combined company would have sales of roughly €25bn a year and employ 120,000 people over more than 100 production sites across the world, Schaeffler said.

Schaeffler said it was “committed” to a friendly takeover of Vitesco, which said it would “carefully evaluate all information and [ . . . ] decide on next steps”.

The chair of Vitesco’s supervisory board, Siegfried Wolf, was in June charged with money laundering by Austrian prosecutors relating to a decades-old fighter jets deal.

It is not the first time this year that Wolf, who owns 5 per cent of Vitesco and sits on the supervisory board of Schaeffler, has faced scrutiny.

The Austrian businessman, who also sits on the supervisory board of Volkswagen owner Porsche SE, this year personally wrote to Vladimir Putin, offering to help him rebuild the Russian car industry using his contacts in Germany.

VW at the time called the letter by the supervisory board member of Porsche SE “irritating” — but Wolf, who until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sat on the board of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s carmaker Gaz, has kept all his positions in the German car industry.