The South Korean giant Samsung has purchased one of the premium suppliers of automotive equipment Harman International Industries, better known for its audiodelay Harman Kardon. The transaction amounts to $ 8 billion in cash and is to Samsung the largest in the history of this company. Buy make Samsung a much more significant player in the production of network equipment and automated systems for vehicles, which is now markedly dominated by such companies as Google, Apple and automakers like Tesla, GM and Volvo.
The Executive Director of the Harman Dinesh was Paliwal notes that the technology worked on by Samsung, perfect for integration of automated products company.
“Samsung is the perfect partner for Harman, and this transition will provide amazing opportunities for our employees, partners and customers,” said was Paliwal in a press release.
Director of Samsung Oh-Hyun Kwon, in turn, noted that Harman “boasts an outstanding list of orders for their products” and “a strong base for the growth of the automated platform of Samsung”.
The largest transaction of the same kind, Samsung was the company to AST for 840 million dollars in the 90-ies. If you don’t know what this company is, it is not surprising, as shortly after signing the agreement, Samsung is literally forced to close the unit. This failure could be the reason why Samsung has decided to deal exclusively with their own solutions instead of buying entire companies to build their technological base.
According to the publication The Wall Street Journal, based on the fair value of the shares of Harman, Samsung overpaid in this deal for 28%, however, the presence of the Harman portfolio for a total amount of 24 billion dollars makes the purchase very profitable.
Harman, based in California (USA), primarily known audioproduktsii sold under brands Harman Kardon, JBL and dbx. One third of her income is contracts with various companies from the automotive industry. The company provides infotainment services that produces security, telecommunications and audio equipment that is used currently in more than 30 million cars companies such as BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen and others.
The final signing of the agreement between Samsung and Harman will be closer to the middle of 2017.
Samsung bought a premium car audio manufacturer Harman Kardon
Nikolai Khizhnyak