Geely's acquisition of Volvo sets good example: Swedish expert

The Chinese carmaker Geely Group 's acquisition of the Swedish brand Volvo from the U.S. auto giant GM set a good example for other Chinese enterprises to merge firms in other countries, said a Swedish expert in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"We have seen the same pattern is now repeated in the automotive industry. Maybe this will also start a much faster pace of acquisition where Chinese companies are requiring heavily in the years to come," said Martin Skold, assistant professor with the Center for Innovation and Operations Management at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Coming from an automotive-related business family and with rich experience in the car industry, Skold has been doing research on the industry for nearly 10 years.

The Geely Group has recently completed its acquisition of the Sweden-based Volvo Car, which used to belong to General Motors.

Skold said the deal was not unexpected.

"We have seen a shift for the last 15 or 10 years where Chinese activities have been very much intensified. We have seen (China's activities) almost in every industry and every business. So it is expected that we should see more activities within automotive industries as well from Chinese companies," Skold said.

He said the global financial crisis that started two years ago caused serious problems for American automakers such as GM, Chrysler and Ford, forcing them to sell the Swedish brands Saab and Volvo, which they bought in the 1990s.

"When we start to analyze the situation, we were thinking of what kind of companies are having money at the moment because the whole world was missing money. And then China has been managing the whole companies in a very smart and wise way over the last decades actually. So we are expected to see some kind of activities may be coming from China," Skold noted.

"We have seen those kind of activities in other industries where Chinese companies have bought western companies, but if I am perfectly informed, this is the first time a Chinese company buys western automotive company, so this is the first time in history actually, so this is really big from that perspective," Skold commented.