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VW chief rejects MAN offer for Scania

The head of German carmaker Volkswagen, which controls a third of Swedish truck manufacturer Scania, rejected a hostile bid from MAN for the Swedish group, in a newspaper interview on Tuesday.

Published: 26 September 2006 14:53 CEST

VW’s chief executive Bernd Pischetsrieder told the Financial Times Deutschland that even if the bid, worth €9.6 billion, was improved it would still be unacceptable.

In Stockholm the price of shares in Scania fell by 5.81 percent to 430 kronor in initial trading. The bid is widely regarded as blocked if Volkswagen is hostile.

Pischetsrieder said that MAN should abandon its approach in favour of private talks.

MAN, a German industrial group, had said on September 19 that it would be happy to have Volkswagen as a shareholder if its bid succeeded.

Pischetsrieder said however that he was in favour in principle of combining Scania and MAN with VW’s heavy truck business in Brazil.

But he added: “For me this can’t be achieved by a takeover of Scania by MAN. I have rejected the bid and have no intention of changing my mind.”

He also objected to the terms because they put the same price on different classes of shares in Scania.

Pischetsrieder said he had repeatedly told MAN chief Hakan Samuelsson that he would not approve a takeover.

Samuelsson has said MAN is preparing an improved offer, but VW’s support is vital because it controls 34.32 percent of Scania’s voting rights and 18.7 percent of its capital.

Pischetsrieder also complained that the offer undervalued VW’s share in Scania. VW mainly holds A shares in Scania which carry greater voting rights, but MAN is offering the same price for A and B shares, valuing each Scania share at 442 kronor.

MAN currently ranks third among European truck makers.

HOMELESS

Jealous Italian admits burning homeless man alive

An Italian who doused a homeless man in petrol and set him alight as he slept has confessed to the killing, telling police he acted out of jealousy.

Published: 12 March 2017 12:32 CET
Jealous Italian admits burning homeless man alive
Stefano79/Depositphotos

Giuseppe Pecoraro, a petrol pump attendant, admitted the attack on Saturday evening, less than 24 hours after Marcello Cimino burned to death outside a mission run by Capuccin monks in Palermo, Sicily.

“He thought that Cimino was after his wife,” local police chief Rodolfo Ruperti told reporters. “They had had a fight about her a few days earlier.”

Pecoraro was arrested with burns on his hands, apparently incurred during a fatal attack which was captured by security cameras and posted on the websites of several Italian media.

The video footage shows the hooded attacker approaching 45-year-old as he slept under heavy bedding in a portico outside the mission, which ran a soup kitchen for the homeless.

He empties a bucket of flammable liquid on to the bedding, takes a lighter from his pocket and sets it alight, sparking an instant blaze that the attacker only just escaped himself.

Neighbours heard the victim screaming but he was dead by the time emergency services arrived at the scene of a killing, which was described as “an act of pure barbarism” by Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando.

Cimino had ended up living on the streets after separating from his wife three years ago.

His killer, Pecoraro, has been charged with murder and a local prosecutor has also opened an investigation for breach of judicial secrecy over the leaking of the video footage to the media.

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