search
Geely’s Acquisition of Volvo: How to Make a Positive Result out of a Cross-border and Cross-age Love
Supervising Professor: Ouyang Hui ; Case Researcher: Yang Yan [ Language available : Chinese ]

In March 2010, young Chinese car maker Geely bought out Volvo, the long-established Swedish car company with the world-famous car brand. This is an inevitable decision for a company facing development bottlenecks and wishing to open up to the Chinese market. For Geely, the acquisition of Volvo was clearly a challenging international strategy. After this “snake-like” merger, Geely not only needed to reorganize production, but also take on management and cultural integration challenges. As a young Chinese company, how does Geely manage Volvo with its strong European corporate culture? In order to solve this integration problem, Geely proposed that “Geely and Volvo are brothers, not father and son.” Instead of integrating in a traditional sense, Geely emphasized parallel production. Under this concept, Geely and Volvo have fully utilized their own strengths and resources in their own management systems, achieving breakthroughs in production and sales after many years, chalking up a win-win for international car industry mergers.

Understand China from the inside

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter today!

  • follow us