Robert Bosch does not plan major takeovers of automotive components firms but is open to smaller deals and expects its purchase of Australia’s Pacifica Group to go ahead, a top company official has said.
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“We don’t see any big acquisitions ahead,” Bernd Bohr, who heads the automotive division at the world’s largest car parts group, told Reuters on the sidelines of an industry conference on Tuesday.
The company already has the critical mass it needs in automotive and would face antitrust issues for the few large targets that are now available, he reportedly added, but could still make deals to boost its core safety, emissions or powertrain operations.
Reuters noted that Bosch is in the middle of acquiring Australian brakes company Pacifica for around $A298m ($234.3m) in a friendly deal. “We are confident we will succeed,” he told the news agency.
According to Reuters, Bohr declined to say specifically whether Bosch was interested in buying any assets from bankrupt US rival Delphi, saying only that Bosch routinely surveyed all assets available on the market.
He reportedly was upbeat about prospects for Bosch sales of stability control technology in the US market, where the government has proposed that all new automobiles come with anti-roll technology as standard equipment beginning in 2009.
The move may boost the penetration of this so-called ESC technology to 44% of new cars made in the United States in 2007 from 21% in 2005, Bohr told the conference, according to the report.
