What does Proton and Harley-Davidson have in common? In a few weeks time, both would have been owners of the MV Agusta Group, which owns the MV Agusta and Cagiva motorcycle brands.
Harley-Davidson signed an agreement last week to purchase 100% of MV Agusta for 70 million Euros, or roughly 355 million ringgit. This sum includes clearing existing bank debuts of about 45 million Euros, or roughly 228 million ringgit.
MV Agusta will continue to be operated from its Italian HQ but a new leadership team including a new Managing Director will be appointed. Claudio Castiglioni will continue to serve as the group’s Chairman, and Massimo Tamburini will continue as the group’s chief designer. Harley Davidson will also use MV Agusta’s European dealership network to expand its Harley Davidson and Buell motorcycle sales.
“Motorcycles are the heart, soul and passion of Harley-Davidson, Buell and MV Agusta. Both have great products and close connections with incredibly devoted customers. The MV Agusta and Cagiva brands are well-known and highly regarded in Europe. They are synonymous with beautiful, premium, Italian performance motorcycles,” said Harley Davidson CEO Jim Ziemer.
Hat tip to Nahar ARS.
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ohh , now who was the moron who sold MV Agusta for 1 euro?
not only that , few months ago a division of MV Agusta was sold to a german company for 90 mil Euro. SO proton lost around rm 800 million . read more here:
http://test.chedet.com/che_det/2008/07/snippets-birthday-road-transpo.html
this is how a company losing millions of ringgit directed by some morons…
guess what would it be if it these moron also govern a country ?
i think that morons better hide behind the moron street…..still red in accounts & still can sold for 70million euros………what a stupid moron the 1euro guy really was.
argh…. congratulation to the board of the morons who sell this MV to others at 1 euro…
good luck HD. better taking good care
PROTON IS DISGUSTING
70 million minus the 45 million in debt equals to 25 million worth.
hmmm…..who was the fool that sold it for 1 euro huh?
must be some really stupid ass company. doesn’t know how to manage a company and still has to be breastfed from the flip flop government it is based in.
aw… $$$… our $$$ gone just like that… the moron didn’t have a good long-run view/investment plan… this kind of ppl can’t be a leader nor in the managerial level. what would Dr. M and former CEO say… heart broken. who’s the one bought the shares from Malaysia? they must be very excited since they sold it with such a high price. Malaysia Boleh!!! the G is superb! we make the world laughs all the time!
Dang I wish I could have offered 2 Euros for it.
haha, lets curse proton till the end. LOL
It is clear that this is the quickest way to make money. Sell of companies, land, sand and etc, etc. Pocket it and declare a small token amount.
Any company or individual in Malaysia could have paid 2Euros for MV Augusta, why was it not offered to the world at large… no prizes for guessing, this is Malaysia. Till today, we don’t even know who the buyer is.
Proton, thumbs up… will never ever buy another proton. You are liken to a kid that gets fed all the time but will never grow up..wasting the rakyats sacrifices all these years in backing you.
Let’s see it in a clear picture. 1st, Tengku Mahalel and Dr. M made a decision to buy MV Augusta which in red at the time (and all the time) because Mitsubishi does not want to together develop engine with proton. In their idea are, MV Augusta expertise in making small engine can be adapt to make a new breed of Proton cars’ engine which is smaller, fuel efficient. Beside that, Tengku Mahalel do take note to take the design team of MV Agusta into Proton design team and come out with something catchy and sporty in proton cars’ design (due to race passion in Tengku’s blood, he is a rally driver by the way). Dr. M once said Honda and Suzuki started with motorcycle. this is what give him inspiration. But in term of cashflow and the desire state of the MV Augusta, it is not possible. It had already sunken the Proton Holding itself because it does not make money and proton have to pump money year on year for it. in economic term, it is feasible to let it go. Pak Lah who wants to eradicate Dr. M idea agree to sell MV Augusta for 1EURO + the whole debts of the company estimated at around 700m at the time. Actually they sold it at RM 705m (including the debts). What is dissapointed are they cannot even manage to retain some of the design, transfering some of the intelectual property in to Proton’s name, and even the brand it self during their time owning the MV Augusta which include Ducati and Cagiva if I’m not mistaken. Just look at BMW, they sold Rover to Chinese car company and retain the Rover brand + Land Rover. The Chinese got the factory, the old design, + new Rowei name. :-) This is really the wrong move by the Proton in term of these 3 things.
moron? they are smart… since the P1 have the G to protect, why dont take some change to get pocket money???
Thanks azrai for informative comment. This should be a lesson to all GLC involve in international trade.
bashing…bashing…bashing…
Thank goodness that the Proton doesn’t ruin MV Agusta brand by using
“two wheel” bike design on a “four wheel” car.
Ichi ban, Proton.
Cheers to Proton.
Proton boleh because Proton does not need to clear existing bank debuts of about 45 million Euros, or roughly 228 million ringgit.
Kudos Proton.
Proton was rumoured to be doing something akin to the Tata 1-Lakh car. This was Tengku Mahaleel’s idea. They hired former Ducati Monster designer Miguel Angel Galuzzi to come in and help with the design. A local engineer contributed his idea – seating something like the McLaren F1. One driver with two passengers alongside, slightly to the rear in a rather compact but useful package. The vehicle was more like a high tech tuk-tuk. Perhaps shades of Gordon Murray’s T25? It would have been a low-cost, but stylish mode of urban transport.
Malaysia boleh! i felt stupid as a Malaysian after reading this purchase deal. SIGH!
Smaller engine fuel efficiency? Yeah but I am not sure about the idea of putting a sport bike engine into a car will mean fuel efficiency but if it really works, Boeing should really consider buying Bugatti?
No I believe they had other ideas for the powertrain. Bike engines are high strung and expensive. Mean time between rebuilds is also much shorter than an automobile engine so that wouldn’t have been the way to go.
yaawwnn.. this is such an old story. but since so many people layan, i’ll put my 2 cents also..
i applaud proton for getting rid of that deadweight mv agusta. it was losing hundreds of millions of RM every year.. can someone here who is bashing blindly tell me thats a good thing?
even when they sold is off for 1 euro, the company that bought it, gevi spa had to inherit all the existing debts.. even now, when harley bought it, they had to inherit some more debts as well..
but not all bad, of course there was value in the design and engineering capability of MV, but proton was definitely not a good match, and had more than enough of its own problems at that time.
The sale to Harley Davidson was on a ‘willing buyer willing seller’ basis. To HL, the company would be an asset, as it would spearhead HL into markets it could not penetrate before. Definitely it was purchased not based on it’s balance sheet, but on it’s name and synergy. On the other hand, Proton sold it purely based on it’s assets and debts, ie purely on it’s accounts. The business did not fit into Proton’s long term plans, and would entail more capital injection, and the creation of a totally new division within Proton, which it could ill afford at that time.
The big question is why it was sold in a hurry, and there was no effort being done to scout around for potential buyers. It looked as if the Proton’s board and management wanted to get rid of it very fast and based on the accounts, it had to. I think they panicked on seeing the liabilities of Augusta.
We are always wiser after the event, but that should not absolve the Proton board for not going the extra mile in seeking the best price. The reason is quite simple: It’s not their money that they are wasting, so why bother?
70 mill euro, that’s what’s a company’s worth, what was proton’s accountants doing at that time? makan durian while sipping tiger beers? idiots
Can’t youall see?
MV Agusta purchase by proton last time is just a scheme for a few individuals to siphon cash from the then cash rich proton into their own pockets…
Thats is why proton paid sooo much for a company that has millions of debt, even during that time…
This is old news, only new bashers! (probably don’t know the whole story)
Well, it is old story but there is new development. The interesting point is that someone, i.e. Harley, paid good money for it when we sold it for one Euro only. Ppl may think that it was a good idea to get rid of a white elephant but if it was really a white elephant, why would the Foreigner, who has a much better sense of business acumen than Malaysian buy it for good consideration? At least they are trying to do something about it such as developing it or using its name.
I can believe that MV Augusta may not have the same development direction as Proton but this begs another question to be asked, why buy it in the first place? Of course someone mentioned the idea of creating a small car or the use of bike engine. But was that really thought out? Why change direction all of a sudden by selling it?
I believe that something was amiss even before Proton bought it. The debt must be incurred either before or during Proton’s ownership. Either way, something is not right. I believe that we as the ppl cannot discount the fact that certain foreigners maybe in cahoots to siphone this money away. It’s not a small sum and if this was another country, many heads will roll (i.e. ppl will be sacked).
As usual Malaysia Boleh!
i thought we could have those agusta brutale’s and f4’s but all we got was modenas
Too bad they pushed TM off before he could get the small car done. Probably cos Proton’s cafeteria had no veggies!! Don’t believe me? Read this:
http://phylum.blogspot.com/2005/08/tengku-mahaleel-advises-to-eat-more.html
Proton are very kind to sell MV for 1 euro, they are not using their own pocket money wat ! its rakyat money thats why they just dispose it off. If its their hard earned money, do u think they will do that ??? End of the day they still make money by selling cheapskid car to rakyat and recover the losses.
It is biasa la. We have many King Midas in this country. Only problem is that, everything that the Midas here touches turns to shit…
Has it ever occurred to people that the post-Proton pre-Harley owner of MV Augusta are a smart bunch of people, had good vision and operational sense, pumped in a lot of money and rebuilt the company? Imagine buying a direlict house on the cheap, fixing everything up and renovating it nicely, and then selling it for a lot more money.
I think the issue here is not the price, whether it is 1 Euro or 70 million Euros. The issue here is that the people in Proton are idiots, they didn’t know what they were doing and they screwed everything up! The 1 Euro price tag was very likely the correct price considering the sorry state that Proton put MV in.
Hi
I see what Proton and Harley Davidson now has in common.
1) For Proton old Ceo buy MV Agusta and same with Harley. New Bod sell off Agusta and now new CEO of Harley trying to sell Agusta.
2) Proton buy Agusta for 70million euro for 51% share Harley bought 70 million euro for 100% share but with no Husvarna(already sold to BMW)
3) Proton sell off in a hurry for 1euro to Gevi Spa and get rid of paying Agusta lousy operation cost. Harley try to sell Agusta but not in a hurry and at the same time financing MV Agusta lousy operation.
4) Both Proton and Harley said that Agusta is a great brand but they need to concentrate on their core business
I am wondering who is actually smarter.