PSA Peugeot Citroen’s main shareholder is willing to talk about alliances but wants PSA to retain independence, according to the firm’s supervisory board chairman.
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Speaking in an interview with Les Echos, Thierry Peugeot said the Peugeot family, which controls a 30% stake, also wants to remain the shareholder of reference, the newspaper said.
The newspaper quoted Thierry Peugeot as saying Peugeot would consider any form of alliance or share partnership.
The only condition is that the Peugeot family must remain as a core shareholder, he said, according to a headline summary.
Analysts have speculated that Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne may well now turn his attention to an alliance with PSA now that his planned merger with Opel is off.
Replacing Opel with PSA would create Europe’s biggest car maker and boost Fiat well over the 5m units of yearly output Marchionne has said he wants.
“You would probably get to run to about 7m units. The scale argument would be even stronger in a Peugeot tie-up in whatever form versus a GM Europe (tie-up),” Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst with Credit Suisse, told Reuters.
“Peugeot has a similar problem, lack of scale in the market.”
However, a potential problem may be that the French government could be reluctant to agree to capacity rationalisations and job losses for PSA in France.
