Japan's Mitsubishi Motor and Sweden's Volvo announced today that Volvo will buy a 5 percent stake in Mitsubishi for $270 million while Mitsubishi will buy up to 5 percent of Volvo by the end of 2002. Volvo sold its passenger car division to Ford Motor Co. early this year. Volvo acquired a majority share in rival truck maker Scania. Volvo's truck division has to stand against hard pressures from Mercedes not only in European market but in global market and also has to develop technical systems for reducing Diesel engines' pollution. Mitsubishi's problem is in passenger cars, not trucks. Some of analysts are wondering whether the new alliance would be good for Mitsubishi. They are afraid the alliance might become heavy burdens for Mitsubishi.
PSA Peugeot Citroen and Ford Motor Company on October 8 signed a new Diesel engine co-operation agreement.
| The co-operation's aim is to solve Diesel engines' pollution problems. Both companies admitted that the joint co-operation has worked well and delivery of first engine resulting from an existing cooperative agreement will begin in 2001. The latest phase will begin delivery in 2000. |
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Autobytel.com, the leading international automotive e-commerce provider, announced on October 8 that it started the online automotive auction system for consumer-to-consumer and dealer-to-consumer automotive transactions. |
According to CBS MarketWatch. Autobytel.com will face competition from rival online sites such as AutoWeb.com, GM. Ford as well as CarPoint and CarDirect.
Other than those news, there have been important latest reports as follow:
| The Nikkei Shimbun's Oct. 9 issue reported today that patent rights on business systems such as for managing sales, production, finance and etc. are being approved in U.S.A. these days. |
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It is well known even in Japan that Priceline.com has a patent right for customer auction (bidders are those who sell goods.) It is one of the above examples. Japan is far behind them for getting patent rights on business, I am afraid that we have not enough time for coping with them.
The rumor that DaimlerChrysler might move their headquarters from Germany to U.S.A. has been reported. At their pre-merger talks, Goldman Sacks was with Chrysler as a financial advisor and Bank of Germany (Deutche Bank) with Mercedes. Although the move of headquarters from Germany was one of the agenda, Bank of Germany was against it resulting its withdrawal from agenda.
A half of directors on board at German corporations are required by law to be representatives from union (Metal Workers Union.) The union is requiring to decrease working hours from 32 hours to less than 30 hours. German corporate tax is much heavy compared with American. There are many reasons why the company wants to move to the states. The liberation of finance and stock brokerage brought down the power of banks. The Bank of Germany became not so strong as it was as an investor. So they might not be able to against the move. We should watch carefully the results of the rumors because it will have huge effects on future actions of global corporations.
