Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin may be partners right now and there have been rumours circulating in the auto industry that the German car manufacturer had intention to buy the British car manufacturer. However Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche, last week suggested in an interview during the Paris Motor Show that the relationship is not going to get more serious anytime soon.
Dieter Zetsche, explained that the company has no plans to increase its current 5% stake in Aston Martin, which had just been raised in July from 4%. Zetsche went further, saying it “would not be in Aston’s interests to be incorporated into a big corporate organization,” and “there is also a danger we would be distracted from our core business.”
However, the Daimler head did indicate the current stake allows for good technical partnership while keeping Aston Martin independent. That means the door is still very much open for product collaboration, and we all know that Aston needs new models. Aston Martin is owned by Kuwaiti and Italian private equity groups, and has struggled in recent years, partly because unlike other high-end UK brands such as Volkswagen-owned Bentley, it is not owned by a wider automaking group capable of supplying investment.
Aston Martin’s pretax loss fell by a third in 2013 on the back of rising sales as the sports car maker said it had seen a small rebound in demand for high-end autos. The company posted a pretax loss of 25.4 million pounds (32.3 million euros) for 2013 on revenue up 13% to 519 million pounds. The automaker sold 4,200 cars in 2013, up from 3,800 in 2012.
Aston Martin said last year’s economic uncertainty had impacted its results and it was unclear when the full effects of a more recent revival would be felt, though there had already been some tentative positive signs in its own market.
