Siemens: Continental bid for VDO not high enough

Continental AG's bid for Siemens' automotive electronics unit Siemens VDO is not high enough, Siemens supervisory board Chairman Gerhard Cromme said.

"Continental will have to markedly improve (its bid)," Cromme said in an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper, released in advance of publication on Sunday, May 27.

Continental's bid was not yet sufficient to shelve a planned stock market floatation of the unit, Cromme was quoted by the paper as saying.

Continental has made a bid of more than $13.4 billion (10 billion euros) for VDO, the paper's sister paper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, quoted well-informed sources as saying in a story released ahead of publication on Saturday, May 26.

The sources warned, however, a binding offer could be substantially different once Continental had conducted due diligence.

A Continental spokesman declined to comment late today.

Germany's manager magazine reported this week Continental is bidding nearly 11 billion euros for VDO and U.S. rival TRW Automotive Holdings Corp. has also made a bid.

Private equity firms KKR and Permira are also interested, the magazine reported.