Chinese carmaker Geely Holding Group may bid for US auto giant Ford Motor's loss-making Volvo Car unit, Geely's listed unit in Hong Kong confirmed Wednesday.
Geely Group, one of the country's largest privately owned carmakers, was considering a bid for Volvo in partnership with another unspecified firm to help fund the deal, a spokeswoman for Geely Automobile Holdings, said.
"We can confirm that our parent company may take such a move, but we are unclear about the specifics," the spokeswoman told AFP, adding there was no timetable yet for the potential deal.
Geely Auto chief executive Gui Shengyue told reporters on Tuesday that Geely Group may bid for the Swedish car brand with the help of a state-owned investment company, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
Geely Group, which previously denied it was planning to buy Volvo, is the latest Chinese firm to eye expansion into overseas markets as competition at home intensifies.
Little-known Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery signed a tentative agreement with US giant General Motors in June to buy the Hummer nameplate as the ailing US automaker sought to dispose of non-core assets.
In July, state-run Beijing Automotive Industry Holding said it had planned to buy GM's Opel unit, though the two failed to reach agreement because of intellectual property rights concerns.
China's auto sales soared 81.7 percent in August from a year earlier to 1.14 million units, breaking the one million unit mark for a sixth consecutive month, an industry group said Tuesday.
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