For British people, it’s a symbol of their car engineering. For James Bond fans, it’s a car that is drooled over by as Bond has drove it in his many movies and even impressed the viewers with his amazing car thrills where ‘Skyfall ‘ is the latest. But the breaking news that is making buzz everywhere is the shift of ownership of Aston martin, the British car maker. And the most surprising is the owner itself. Yes, the iconic English car could be soon owned by Mahindra & Mahindra, the famous Indian car manufacturers.
The news about this ownership issue came into limelight this weekend and it has reported by the press that the British car maker is surrounded by a battle of possession where Mahindra & Mahindra is involved with its bid of 50% stake in the company. On the other side of the battle is the Investindustrial, the Italian private equity fund that has reached on an accord with the current owner of Aston Martin, Investment Dar the Kuwaiti house of investment. But Mahindra’s bid is slightly higher than the Investindutrail making the 98 years old car maker company’s fortune into a jiffy.
The sources near to the companies informed that the winner of the bid will have equity stake of 40% and the voting rights of 50% within the company. However, the rest of the stakes will be retained by the Aston Martin and Investment Dar.
Over the weekend, the talks took place between the companies where it was exposed that around $200-$250 million have been raised to bid by the Investindustrial and the company is quite assured of its win because of the ‘technically’ sound proposal in technical coordination with Daimler AG’s Mercedes. What Mahindra has quoted, is still mystifying.
As the manufacturing unit of Aston Martin is concerned, it would remain at Gaydon, Warwickshire.
It has also been divulged that Mahindra was quite interested to access the engineering of Aston Martin in order to upgrade itself on the vehicle manufacturing platform. It is now a matter of time when one of the biggest money garners in the field of luxury cars would work under the ownership of an Indian company.
Mahindra is a leading tractor maker in the world along with manufacturing of the highest number of sports utility automobiles in India. The motor giant also controls the operations of Ssangyong Motor Co Ltd., a South Korean car manufacturer.
