If you haven’t heard of Geely Holding Group before then let us give you a quick refresher, it is a Chinese multinational manufacturing company headquartered in the province of Hangzhou. A quicker recap would be to simply say Geely owns Volvo. Volvo is under going a transformative resurgence under new Chinese ownership and the money Geely has pumped into the Swedish company is the key that has driven Volvo to it’s current success.
So how does this involve Lotus? Well Lotus are owned by Proton a Malaysian company, DRB-Hicom is the Maylasian conglomerate that owns both companies. However Proton has been struggling and leaking money.
Proton’s struggles led to the Malaysian government handing out a $338 million dollar aid package to turn around the company’s fortunes. A condition was set, to seek foreign investment in order to undertake a turnaround plan.
A number of bidders lined up Suzuki, Renault and Peugeot. However no deal was made, the most keen of bidders, Peugeot, has become distracted with a potential bid for struggling Vauxhall/Opel.
It has been speculated that Geely is now front of the cue. Initial reports suggest Geely wants 51 percent of Proton, this would give Geely virtually total control of the company with the ability to veto any future objections from the old guard.
Geely want’s to leverage the experience and technologies gained through Volvo and apply it in order to resurrect Proton’s territorial sales.
By sharing technologies developed with Volvo Geely could get open access to the global RHD market, such a market sells 8 million RHD cars per year.
The reason why the UK press is alert to this news is simple. If Chinese investment can turn around Volvo it could do the same for Lotus.
In the minds of patriotic British motoring press Proton does not even come into the equation, in purely selfish self-interest Geely would be the ideal partner for Proton because Lotus will live on.