Mar 31, 2007, 16:07 GMT
Frankfurt - With private-equity investors reported to be hungry for the prize, DaimlerChrysler could net up to 9 billion euros for the sale of its US division Chrysler, a German newspaper said Saturday.
Welt am Sonntag, releasing news to appear in its Sunday edition, quoted sources close to the negotiations as saying the sale could yield 'between 6 billion and 9 billion dollars,' well ahead of earlier estimates.
The Goldman Sachs investment bank had earlier forecast bids would top out at around 6 billion euros.
Private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management lodged a bid for Chrysler on Friday, the newspaper said. Cerberus was reported to see the key value in Chrysler's financial services division.
The Detroit News has reported Blackstone Group and the Canadian auto supplier Magna International Inc were also expected to bid. Magna was expected to team with private-equity group Ripplewood.
DaimlerChrysler declined comment Saturday on the report.
Buyers put their hands up in mid-February when DaimlerChrysler chief executive Dieter Zetsche announced the company was keeping all options open for Chrysler, the fourth-largest US automaker and parent to the Jeep and Dodge brands.
Hilmar Kopper, retiring chairman of DaimlerChrysler's supervisory board, meanwhile scorned speculation that private-equity firms might lasso the whole of DaimlerChrysler and break it up to chisel out its unsung value.
'As long as the business is properly run and fairly valued on the stockmarket, Daimler is going to be just too big,' Kopper told a Sunday newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
He rejected the idea of friendly investors clubbing together to ward off private-equity investors.
'That kind of club is only stable if the business is profitable,' he said. 'They need that pressure, otherwise the protection only serves the interests of management, often to the detriment of other stockholders.'
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