Pak Lah right, Mahathir wrong
(LSS) – One of the issues that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad used to attack Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) on was the sale of the motorcycle company MV Agusta for one Euro back in December 2005.
Proton under Mahathir then had purchased MV Agusta just a year earlier in Dec 2004 for 70 million Euros (RM367.68 million then) and a further RM142.66 million was pumped by Proton into Augusta for recapitalisation.
Mahathir then fell-out with Pak Lah and just a year after buying Agusta and Proton sold off the company for one Euro, incurring a RM510 million loss.
In typical opportunistic fashion, DAP led by Kit Siang sided with Mahathir and slammed Pak Lah for the sale of Agusta.
READ HERE: https://limkitsiang.com/
However, this one Euro sale by Proton is misleading as the buyer also had to incur 232 million Euros (RM1.3 billion then) in debt owed by Agusta.
Since then, the company that bought Agusta from Proton had paid off some of the 232 million Euro in debt by selling off some assets and on July 11, 2008, the world’s most famous motorcycle company, Harley-Davidson, bought Augusta for 70 million Euro – the same price that Proton paid for Agusta but with less debt outstanding.
Just a little over a year later, Harley-Davidson tak boleh tahan and on October 15, 2009, Harley sold the company again for (also) one Euro but worse, also had to pay the buyer 20 million Euros to take over the heavy loss-making company.
Harley-Davidson takes a beating on MV Agusta
http://archive.jsonline.com/
Agusta continued making huge losses and on October 31, 2014, Mercedes-AMG bought a 25% stake in Agusta for an undisclosed sum.
However, Agusta continued to post huge losses and in less than 17 months after Mercedes’s entry, production has ceased and Agusta filed for bankruptcy in March 2016.
Since then, no bikes have been produced and Agusta was then bought by a venture company called Black Ocean in November 2016. http://www.roadracingworld.
In July 2017, it was reported that some Russian investors have agreed to put in money to recapitalise and re-start production but firm plans have yet to be announced.
https://www.asphaltandrubber.
If Harley-Davidson was unsuccessful and ended up losing more money than Proton within a year and if Mercedes-AMG is also unsuccessful, what chance would Proton have if it had retained Agusta?
If we had listened to Mahathir then (who already cost Proton RM510 million losses on Augusta within a year) or to DAP then, Proton could very well have ended up losing untold billions if it had stubbornly held on to Augusta.
History has proven Pak Lah correct and Mahathir/DAP wrong.
