Chery Automobile, China’s largest home-grown car maker, will essentially stay away from overseas acquisitions even though it has been approached repeatedly, its chairman was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
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“We have been offered many fancy proposals [by investment bankers]. Their business is to buy and sell,” Yin Tongyao said in an interview published on Chinese website Sohu.com, according to Reuters.
“They want you to get married today and split the next day, this is typically what investment bankers do…and we won’t be hoodwinked.”
Yin also denied oversea media reports about Chery’s purchase of a Fiat car plant on the Italian island of Sicily.
“I was told that foreign media said we had bought a Fiat plant. There is no such thing,” Yin was quoted as saying.
Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper had reported that Chery was in talks to take over the Fiat car factory, Reuters noted.
Industry sources had told the news agency they were “bemused” and did not see it making sense for Chery, as the plant is on an island and the logistics of exporting had hampered current owner Fiat.
Chery executives could not be reached immediately for comment and Fiat declined to comment.
Chery, maker of one of China’s best-selling compact cars, the QQ, had also tried to raise its profile by cooperating with foreign automakers, but refrained from doing so to avoid risks, Yin added.
Rather than acquiring and trying to revive an overseas brand, Chinese automakers can also work their own way up to the higher end, he had said in March.
Chery had at that time unveiled its first self-developed medium-to-high end sedan, the Riich G6, which Yin and other Chery executives hope can eventually compete with Volkswagen’s famed Audi A6, produced locally by an FAW-VW joint venture.
In July 2007, Chery and Chrysler agreed to manufacture compact cars under the Chrysler badge for sale in the Americas, but the plan was aborted after Nissan Motor reached a similar deal with the US firm.
It has delayed a car venture with Fiat, which later forged a manufacturing partnership with Guangzhou Automobile.
