If you think Volvo will stay chaste and out of the grips of the Chinese, abandon all hope. The Chinese are coming to take away your Svenska flikka away for good. Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping is on his tour of Europe. This weekend, he will arrive in Sweden.
The high points will be a meeting with Sweden’s King Carl Gustav XVI (would have a nice ring to it at the back of a car, without the Carl Gustav) and a trip to the scenic city of Gothenburg to attend the signing of a formal deal for Zhejiang Geely Holding Group to buy Ford Motor’s Volvo car unit, Reuters reports.
No longer in denial, a Volvo spokesman has confirmed that preparations are underway at the company’s headquarters in Gothenburg. A Geely representative told reporters today that his company aims to sign the Volvo transaction agreement by the end of this month as planned. There aren’t many days left in this month.
Details of the deal are here, where we predicted the move by analyzing the travel plans of China’s VP.
Headquarters; ’til April Fool’s Day.
Don’t know why, but this situation reminded me of the lyrics:
“Trouble is her only friend and he’s back again.
Makes her body older than it really is.
She says it’s high time she went away,
No one’s got much to say in this town.
Trouble is the only way is down. Down, down.”