International.
The multinational company Midea announced the acquisition of 46.3% of the shares of the German robot company called Kuka.
This is how Midea manages to secure most of Kuka, to obtain around 60% of the shares, given that it already had a 13% stake in the German industrial robotics firm.
Local sources revealed that the offer to buy shares proposed by Midea to the shareholders of Kuka in mid-June of this year reached 115 euros per share, which means valuing the robot company at 4,600 million euros. Based on this, Midea would have paid about 2,000 million euros for 46.3% of Kuka.
Given the uneasiness over the loss of jobs generated in Germany with the announcement of the purchase offer, both firms announced last week an agreement by which Midea commits to maintain the current headquarters in Augsburg, in addition to factories and jobs. Recall that Kuka, founded in 1898, is present in more than 30 countries, including Spain, has about 12,000 workers and its sales in 2015 were around 3,000 million euros.
The operation is part of a context dominated by a significant growth in the demand for robots in China. Since 2013, the Asian country has bought more industrial robots each year than any other country, and is expected to become the world's leading market for industrial robots in 2018.
