The latest shareholders of the Saab car brand is now Hawtai Motor Group company Limited after an agreement was signed between Spyker Cars NV and Saab Automobile AB with Hawtai. This will result in a medium term funding service that include a strategic alliance with the Chinese company that would involve manufacturing, technology and distribution amounting to EUR 150 million.
Hawtai is one of the private automotive companies where it operates from its headquarters and R&D facility in Beijing. On top of that, it also has 2 production plants located in Ordos in the Inner Mongolian areas as well as in Shangdong Province’s Rongcheng. It currently produces up to 350,000 units annually, 300,000 clean diesel engines as well as 450,000 automatic transmissions. The target is ambitious where they are looking to roll out 1 million vehicles, 1 million engines and 1 million automatic transmissions by the year 2015
In the agreement Spyker will get a subscription agreement of EUR 120 million from Hawtai and EUR 30 million in convertible loans. Hawtai will get a maximum of 29.9% equity stake in Spyker and would be subjected to the conditions and the definitive transaction documents. Since leaving the GM stable, Saab has been owned by the Dutch company Spyker Cars and rumour has it that the brand has been looking for more investments in monetary terms in order to continue its development and growth. And with the EUR 30million cash injection, Saab could well restart its production which have been stopped last month due to its dispute with suppliers as they could not settle its outstandings.
According to the CEO of Spyker Victor Muller who is also the chairman of Saab Automobile, this would be great for Saab who with the financing terms meant that they would have more investments but would also be important to help the brand enter the Chinese market through the strong partnership and brand presence of Hawtai. Meanwhile, the Vice President of Hawtai, Mr Richard Zhang said that it was a great leap forward for the company who was only established only 10 years ago and with the new agreement, it would surely propel the company forward with the likes of technology transfer and knowledge acquisition.
