Li Shufu is leaving the truck manufacturer

Li Shufu at the People’s Congress in Beijing

The billionaire is said to have good connections to the Chinese leadership.

(Photo: IMAGO/Xinhua)

Vienna The world’s largest truck manufacturer Daimler Truck loses its major Chinese shareholder Li Shufu. As can be seen from a stock exchange notification on Thursday, the entrepreneur sold his block of shares with the Swabians worth around 1.5 billion euros in their entirety.

Li, who also calls himself Eric Li in the West, previously held a 6.3 percent stake in Daimler Truck through his company Tenaciou3 Prospect Investment. The 59-year-old was the third largest owner of the truck manufacturer behind the car manufacturers Mercedes-Benz from Stuttgart and the Chinese car manufacturer BAIC. With the exit from the commercial vehicle manufacturer, Li is reorganizing its investment strategy in Europe.

The founder of the Chinese car conglomerate Geely with brands such as Volvo Cars, Lotus and Zeekr became known to a broad public in Germany at the beginning of 2018. At that time, the billionaire shocked the local economy and politics by using tricky financial constructions to become one of the largest individual shareholders of the then Daimler group almost overnight.

Geely Group is a close partner of Mercedes

In the meantime, the waves have settled. Fears of a hostile takeover have proven unrealistic, especially as Germany’s Foreign Trade Act has been tightened. Li has even proven to be a helpful partner for the brand. For example, his Geely group builds small cars under the Smart brand for the Stuttgart company and will also supply four-cylinder petrol engines to the group from 2024.

The split of Daimler AG into the car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz Group and Daimler Truck, together with its own stock market listing, gave Li the opportunity to focus his investment at the end of 2021. According to industry circles, the entrepreneur, who is said to have close ties to China’s head of state Xi Jinping, was never interested in Daimler Trucks anyway, only in the luxury cars from Mercedes.

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Still, Li hesitated for well over a year before selling his block of shares. According to insiders, the billionaire deliberately waited, on the one hand, to spare the company a possibly crooked appearance if a major shareholder fled the stock market launch. On the other hand, Li probably also wanted to take possible price jumps with the truck giant.

Li Shufu holds shares in Volvo Trucks

Daimler Truck is currently worth more than 25 billion euros on the stock exchange. The shares of the Dax group rose by more than 1.6 percent on Friday after Li’s exit. The truck manufacturer itself did not want to comment on the loss of its major shareholder. The group only confirmed that Li sold his shares.

A Geely spokesman explains that Li intends to remain invested in Daimler Trucks’ major competitor, the Swedish truck manufacturer Volvo Trucks. The same applies to the commitment to Mercedes-Benz, in which Li holds almost ten percent of the shares.

More: Freed from the conglomerate: Daimler Truck is more profitable than it has been for decades

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