Volkswagen takes over majority stake in Scania

Germany's Volkswagen group has acquired the majority stake in Swedish truckmaker Scania. The major shareholders of the Swedish Wallenberg family have sold their shares to the German automaker. The trade union at Scania is putting its trust in Volkswagen's promise to maintain the Swedish plant in Södertälje in operation. Göran Greider fears "the trade union is being somewhat naïve here" and writes: "When Volvo and Scania were planning a merger eight years ago, the European Commission put an end to their plans saying that the resulting group would have too large a share of the market. This basically means that in the long term the EU wants to prevent the creation of large companies in small countries while permitting companies that are just as huge and have an equally large share of the market in big countries like Germany. National capital - in this case that of the Wallenbergs - is no longer national and no longer interested in production. Quarterly profits now count more than production."

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