Mercedes-Benz rules out possibility of Chinese shareholders blocking minority, report says

Kaellenius and Winfried Kretschmann, the president of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the German state where Mercedes is headquartered, dismissed the possibility of a takeover by Chinese investors.

“We would not allow that at all,” they told the business daily Handelsblatt in a joint interview.

In 2016 the purchase of German robotics maker Kuka by China’s Midea caused a political storm in Germany.

A similar “mistake” to the one made with Kuka would not be repeated, Kretschmann said. Germany’s Foreign Trade and Payments Act has been tightened up since the Kuka takeover, he said.