Voith to invest 400m euros in China
SHANGHAI - Voith GmbH, a maker of paper, hydro-electric equipment and various other technology, plans to invest 400 million euros ($527 million) in China in the coming years, a company executive said.
The German company, one of the largest family-owned businesses in Europe, expects its number of employees in China to increase by nearly 70 percent and reach 5,000 by 2016, according to Hubert Lienhard, Voith president and CEO.
The $527-million investment will be partly financed by a loan of 2.25 billion yuan (about $357 million) that Voith sealed earlier this week with a consortium of international banks and a local bank. The loan has a maturity of five years and was coordinated by Citibank (China) with the help of Voith Finance GmbH, which is owned by Voith Group. The banks, Commerzbank AG and HSBC Holdings PLC, are acting as the lead arrangers in the deal, and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd and Standard Chartered Bank are acting as the original lenders.
