BERLIN — Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kallenius ruled out the possibility that two major Chinese shareholders could increase their stakes and create a blocking minority in the automaker.
BAIC Group is the largest individual shareholder in Mercedes with 9.98 percent of voting rights. Geely Chairman Eric Li holds an equity interest of 9.69 percent, and the Kuwait Investment Authority holds 6.84 percent.
Geely, in particular, is quietly disrupting Europe’s auto market. The Chinese conglomerate, founded by Li, now owns or collaborates with more than a dozen companies that do business in the region, including Volvo Cars, Polestar and Lotus.
Kaellenius and Winfried Kretschmann, the president of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the German state where Mercedes is headquartered, dismissed the possibility of a takeover by Chinese investors.
“We would not allow that at all,” they told the business daily Handelsblatt in a joint interview.
In 2016 the purchase of German robotics maker Kuka by China’s Midea caused a political storm in Germany.
A similar “mistake” to the one made with Kuka would not be repeated, Kretschmann said. Germany’s Foreign Trade and Payments Act has been tightened up since the Kuka takeover, he said.