Pang Qingnian: The Auto Acquisitions Digest Full Set of Technology
2012-09-13 Source：www.morningwhistle.com
Summarize：Pang Qingnian, Chairman of China Youngman Automobile Group, likes to call his car developing mode as “the third way”. No matter in his relatively mature bus and truck, or in the developing car business, Youngman Automobile takes a different mode from both joint and self owned brands.
www.chinabuses.org: Pang Qingnian, Chairman of China Youngman Automobile Group, likes to call his car developing mode as “the third way”. No matter in his relatively mature bus and truck, or in the developing car business, Youngman Automobile takes a different mode from both joint and self owned brands.
Though the strengths of Youngman Automobile are still in the fields of luxury passenger cars and trucks, the “Saab acquisition case” has disclosed to the world the ambitions and aspiration of this Zhejiang private automobile company in car sector. Pang Qingnian was not as frustrated as expected facing with the result that Saab was finally bought by another Chinese, Jiang Dalong. In his viewpoint, it’s more valuable to own platform technology than model technology without brand.
Question: Youngman Automobile has just spent 10 million euro buying 74.9% stake of German VISEON Bus Company. What are your main considerations?
Pang Qingnian: VISEON has always been cooperating with us to produce the deluxe busNEOPLAN. We have been cooperating for over 10 years from assembling at the very beginning to producing spare parts after introducing their technology later. Now we have digested NEOPLAN’s full set of technology, including quality, standards, technology and knacks. Acquiring VISEON allows us to keep pace with the most advanced standards in Europe. For VISEON, producing spare parts in China can help to reduce cost; while for us, we can export a large number of components. After the acquisition, I can directly command company’s issues. For example, I required that 49% of producing cost should be covered by Youngman Automobile now and I can send staff to German or let him back here in China at any time.
Question: Do you feel that your business mode is different from other joint or self-owned brands?
Pang Qingnian: Yes. Drawbacks of the joint venture are quite obvious – we have to buy components from partner with high price, pay royalties for technology, but let foreign partner take away resources from China. While self-owned brands now have wasted a lot of resources, but their technology still cannot reach the same level with foreign or joint brands. Consequently, I choose the third way of technical cooperation – through the purchase of technology, we digest eventually the full set.
Question: How do you see the “Saab acquisition case”, which cost you 6 years and 400 million yuan?
Pang Qingnian: I don’t think I’m a loser in this case. I had bought Saab’s PhoeniX platform before the company went bankrupt as I’m not willing to buy a bankrupt company. I believe it worth 46 million euro as I can develop my own car styles with the platform, which has been digested for over half year.
Question: Do you have any standards when choosing a company to cooperate? Why did you choose NEOPLAN in passenger car sector and Proton from Malaysia in car sector?
Pang Qingnian: NEOPLAN and Proton are quite similar that they are both not very large scalebut of high quality and excellent technology. So they could not be too strong to require joint-venture. I bought technology along with brands as standards for technology with brands are quite different from for those without brands. Moreover, foreign companies will take technical cooperation seriously only when we take over their brands.
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