23.03.2004

Terex among bidders for Daewoo Heavy

Terex the construction equipment, Crane and Access company are said to be among the 21 bidders for Daewoo Heavy Industries and Machinery, Koreas largest producer of Construction equipment.

Twenty-one firms are interested in buying all or part of Daewoo Heavy & Machinery Co Ltd, a unit of South Korea's defunct Daewoo Group, an official from the government agency Kamco who are responsible for the sale, said on Tuesday.
Potential buyers included Terex, Germany’s Linde AG, and Deere & Co

Six of the 21 firms were interested in buying only Daewoo Heavy's defence business, which could be sold separately from other operations depending on price, he added.

State-run Kamco is managing the sale of Daewoo Heavy, which received a public bailout after the parent group's failure in late 1999. Daewoo Heavy makes a wide variety of machinery, including excavators, tower cranes, wheel loaders and concrete pumps. It also manufactures various military vehicles, guns and missile systems.

The government plans to pick one or two primary negotiating partners in May. Kamco and Korea Development Bank, a state-run bank, control about 57 percent of Daewoo Heavy. The planned sale is part of efforts to recoup some of the $135 billion of taxpayer’s money used to bail out troubled Korean companies in the wake of 1997-1998 financial crisis.