Friday 29th September 2017

Geely completes Lotus takeover

DRB-Hicom ownership is no more; Lotus now entirely owned by Geely and Etika Automotive

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While the news has been doing the rounds for a while now, today it's official: Geely now holds a majority stake in Lotus.

With 51 per cent of the company with the Chinese firm and 49 per cent owned by Malaysian automotive group Etika, there is no involvement from DRB-Hicom any longer. A new joint board has been formally established to reflect this, with five seats featuring three from Geely appointments and two from Etika - Jean-Marc Gales will keep his position as CEO.

Great to drive already; now can more be expected?

"We now look forward to working with our partners to develop Lotus into a globally competitive brand and a well recognised leader in the sports car market" said Daniel Donghui Li, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice Pres of Geely, as well as now Chairman of the Lotus board. Given how much potential Lotus has shown under Gales with limited resources, hopefully this is the sort of impetus it needs to finally progress further. Think how far Volvo has come since Geely purchased it from Ford...

Lotus has already enjoyed a positive 2017 - with sales up 10 per cent in the first six months compared to 2016 - so it's nice to report on further good news. While of course nothing further has been announced yet, we're waiting eagerly for the next developments from Lotus with some proper corporate welly behind it. As Gales commented in the press material: "We are producing the best cars in the company's history"; we certainly wouldn't disagree with that, and everything is pointing towards that continuing even further in the near future. More news as we have it...

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[griffdude]

That's really good news. As the article said, look at the progression at Volvo with these guy's backing.