Divorce
Following DaimlerChrysler's decision to cease further investment in its Japanese partner, Rolf Eckrodt stepped down as chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi, and retired from DCX in April 2004. Soon after, Chrysler's Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Bernhard also parted ways with the German parent over its continuing troubles and falling profits, while the merger with MMC was now routinely being referred to by the media as a "debacle". A third attempt to recapitalize Mitsubishi in January 2005 led to ¥540 billion of further investment, and DaimlerChrysler's now owned only a 12.4 percent stake. Finally, on November 11, 2005, the remaining stock was sold for US$1.1 billion. Three days later the buyer, investment bank Goldman Sachs sold the shares on for US$80 million profit.
New major stockholder Phoenix Capital followed suit the following month, selling all but 50 million of its 575 million shares to JPMorgan on December 9, 2005, and once again the investment bank offloaded their purchase within a few days for tens of millions of dollars in profit. In both cases, the eventual buyers were part of the Mitsubishi keiretsu, returning MMC to Japanese ownership.
Read more about this topic: Daimler Chrysler-Mitsubishi Alliance
Famous quotes containing the word divorce:
“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Ever since you came back from Tibet I’ve had a feeling you were planning to divorce me and marry a laboratory.”
—John Colton (1886–1946)
“Anybody who’s been through a divorce will tell you that at one point ... they’ve thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn’t that major.”
—Oliver Stone (b. 1946)