30.07.2002

Demag & Gottwald cranes in new hands

Siemens has sold Demag Cranes & Components and Gottwald Port Technology.

The buyer, private equity investor Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) has bought seven companies in all, for a total of E1.69 billion.

The sale is part of Siemens’ streamlining, following its acquisition of several unwanted assets when it bought Mannesmann Dematic and other engineering companies from Vodafone three years ago. It recently sold Demag Mobile cranes to Terex for $150 million.

Demag Cranes & Components employs nearly 7,000 people in twenty international companies and six German facilities. In 2001 it claimed slaes figures of around E750 million. Gottwald, also headquartered in Germany, is a harbour mobile crane specialist with 530 employees and sales of E160 million in 2001.

The other companies changing hands are Stabilius, Siemens Network Systems, Siemens Ceramics, Siemens Metering and Mannesmann Plastics machinery, which produces injection moulding machines and claimed E1.2 billion in sales in 2001. It has 6,400 employees. These will now be added to the KKR portfolio of more than 30 major companies in the US, Canada, UK, Germany and Austria.

The divested business activities will be controlled by new company Demag Holding sarl of Luxembourg, in which Siemens will have a 19 percent stake and KKR will have 81 percent.