China Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, has amassed a stake of 9.69% in Daimler, the German automaker said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
The stake, worth nearly USD9 billion at the current market price for Daimler shares, makes Li the biggest-single shareholder in the Stuttgart-based maker of Mercedes-Benz cars, trucks and vans.
Li has been building up a stake of just under 10% through purchases of Daimler’s shares in the stock market in recent weeks.
Geely has been seeking to strike an alliance with Daimler over electric cars technology. Last November that Daimler had turned down an offer from Geely to take a stake of up to 5% via a discounted share placement. At the time, Daimler declined to issue new shares because it did not want to see existing stockholders’ share values diluted.
Chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Li Shufu will travel to Germany to begin talks with Daimler. He is seeking to build the company into a Chinese version of the Volkswagen group with brands in different segments of the market.
