More Shock News as Kobelco Takes a Major Share in CNH

Yesterday sprung up yet another industry surprise as it was announced that Japanese manufacturer Kobelco is going to acquire a majority stake in Italian-American based CNH Industrials construction machinery business.

Kobelco will take a 70% stake in the business, with CNH remaining as a minority shareholder in a newly formed company. From past experiences of such amalgamations, one would speculate, that in the course of time, Kobelco will eventually take full shareholding of the business after a cooling down period

The transaction is subject to approvals from competition authorities and other customary closing conditions. CNH will first transfer its construction business to a separate company, in which Kobelco will acquire a majority stake. CNH will remain a minority shareholder in the new company.

The deal will include the long-established brands under the CNH Industrial banner, such as CASE, New Holland and the Italian mini excavator manufacturer Eurocomach.

Quite how this will all pan out is unknown at this point in time, as far as I can see, and what will it mean for dealers selling these brands in the UK, although at the time of writing, we don’t currently appear to have a main Kobelco dealer in the country following the collapse of Molson Group.

What hasn’t been made clear as yet, is will the CNH brands continue to be sold as they are now, or will we be seeing Kobelco excavators branded as CASE, New Holland, and Eurocomach? Of course, such scenarios are nothing new, we have already seen New Holland – Kobelco machines in partnership before, so this looks set to be another new era of badged engineering.

I guess we will all now have to wait and see what happens going forward so some exciting times ahead, just as I thought things were starting to wind-down for Christmas!