Porsche launches low cost bid for VW
Frankfurt: German luxury carmaker Porsche has launched a takeover offer for Volkswagen at 14 per cent below the latter's closing stock price.

Porsche said it does not want majority control of Volkswagen, Europe's largest automaker, but would raise its stake in Volkswagen to up to 31 percent from the current 27.3 percent. The larger holding forces it under German law to bid for the remaining VW shares.

Porsche already holds an option to purchase up to 3.7 per cent of VW ordinary shares. Exercising it would take Porsche's holding above 31 percent and trigger the mandatory offer to other VW shareholders.

"Once this mandatory bid has been made, further increases of Porsche's stake in VW would not trigger any renewed obligation to make an offer to the minority shareholders of the Wolfsburg-based carmaker," Porsche said following an extraordinary supervisory board meeting.

The expected offer is well below VW's closing share price on Friday of 117.70 euros.

The German state of Lower Saxony, which controls 20 percent of VW's shares, will remain a large shareholder in the carmaker together with Porsche which said it also planned to set up a holding company that would manage the stakes in Porsche AG and Volkswagen, and that this firm would become a European company.
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GE to acquire Sanyo Credit
Tokyo: General Electric's (GE) commercial finance division will acquire Sanyo Electric Credit for 135 billion yen ($1.14 billion). The GE subsidiary will pay 3,250 yen a share for the company, which is a premium of 62 pc to the share price at the close of trading in Tokyo. Sanyo Credit has agreed to the offer.

Analysts said buying Sanyo Electric Credit will enable GE to lend to smaller companies and expand its leasing business. The sale is also part of a plan to revive Sanyo Electric, the consumer electronics maker that Goldman Sachs Group helped bail out 12 months ago.

Goldman Sachs will receive about 43 billion yen for its controlling stake in Sanyo Credit, almost double the 24 billion yen it paid a year ago for the leasing and finance unit.

Sanyo Credit had outstanding loans of about 800 billion yen at the end of 2006, according to a statement from GE. The company derived 57 pc of its revenue from leasing and 26 pc from lending as of March 31 last year.

General Electric is buying the unit after the government has tightened rules on consumer credit companies and limited the interest they can charge.

Sanyo Credit posted net income of 3.6 billion yen for the six months ended September 30, from a loss of 11.4 billion yen a year earlier. Its parent company Sanyo Electric posted a profit of 6.05 billion yen in the three months ended September 30, following losses of 79 billion yen in the preceding six months.
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