HWM Singapore – June 2019

heart. Only, they didn’t just join the leading
companies in the industries they were
interested in; they bought them. That
didn’t necessarily mean a full takeover
at the management level though. Take
Geely Motor’s acquisition of Volvo in 2010
for example. Geely Group acquired Volvo
Cars from Ford back in 2010, but Hakan
Samuelsson remains the Chairman of
the Executive Board (CEO).
The company continues to do all of its
innovation and R&D in Gothenburg under
extreme weather conditions with the aim
of producing the safest car possible; with
an emphasis on safety tech that Chinese
consumers  nd especially important.
Volvo has also added fancier models with
new styling and technologies to match the
requests from Geely chairman Li Shufu;
slightly breaking away from tradition in
the process, but otherwise the brand
remains very much aligned with its
core values.
Likewise, Chinese drone maker
DJI supposedly acquired a stake into
Hasselblad back in 2015*, providing the
needed funding for the camera maker
to push forward with its X1D camera en
masse. The two companies have since
teamed up to launch DJI drones with
Hasselblad aerial cameras, thus pairing
the know-how from each company
perfectly. Importantly though, the core
focus of Hasselblad has remained
high performance medium format
cameras – Hasselblad doing what
Hasselblad does best.

*Various reports have surfaced around
the internet that DJI has bought up
more shares in Hasselblad, making it the
majority owner, but neither company has
con rmed or denied the transaction.

8 WESTERN COMPANIES YOU

DIDN’T KNOW ARE PART CHINESE

ASTON MARTIN – In 2012, ChinaEquity

Group and co-investors invested £150 million

pounds (US$254.5 million), in the iconic

British carmaker Aston Martin.

PARADOX INTERACTIVE – Tencent has been

allocated 5.28 million shares at an off ering

price of 33 Swedish crowns per share, and

holds 5% equity interest in Paradox

Interactive post-transaction.

UBISOFT – Tencent spent about €370 million

(about US$455 million) for a 5 percent stake

in French game developer Ubisoft.

SPOTIFY – Music streaming company Spotify

and the music arm of China’s Tencent Holdings

Ltd bought a minority stake in each other’s

businesses, with the Chinese company reported

to be one of Spotify’s largest shareholders

with 7.5% share.

DAIMLER – The Zhejiang Geely Holding

Group Co. has accumulated a stake worth

about €7.3 billion (US$9 billion) in Daimler

AG, marking the biggest investment in a

global automobile manufacturer by a

Chinese company.

LILIUM – Lilium is a proposed electrically

powered light sport VTOL (vertical take-off

and landing) aircraft. It provides a set of fully

redundant computers to  y the airplane and

controlling all functions of the engines and

actuator, and Tencent Holdings led a recent

investment of US$90 million in the company.

MOTOROLA MOBILITY – Lenovo bought

Motorola Mobility from Google for US$ 2.91

billion in 2014, hoping to use the brand as a key

platform to expand in the developed markets.

VOLVO – The Swedish brand was sold off by

Ford Motors to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group

in 2010 for US$1.8 billion – the largest overseas

acquisition by a Chinese automaker till date.

JUNE 2019 | HWM 49