In recent years, as the auto industry has intensified reforms, in the field of global auto parts, mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, splits, and sales have been staged continuously. Some established multinational auto parts companies have gradually "disappeared", changed their faces, or left the car. In the industry, there are also some multinational component companies with poor management or good prospects that have been put on the market by others.

The giants of yesteryear have changed their faces

Speaking of the makeover of parts manufacturers, Delphi and Johnson Controls are the most thorough. Although Bosch has continued to top the top 100 global auto parts list in recent years, Delphi was the leader of the global auto parts industry before 2005. However, in the past ten years, Delphi has been going downhill and continuously divesting assets. In 2008, it split the interior and door lock division into inteva. In 2009, it sold its chassis and suspension business to Beijing. West Heavy Industries sold its exhaust control system to Kekang, and sold its air-conditioning business to Mahle in 2015.

Until 2017, Delphi carried out a complete split, the parent company was renamed Anbofu, and the powertrain business department inherited the name of the old owner, named Delphi Technology, waiting to be sold. At the beginning of this year, BorgWarner announced a wholly-owned acquisition of Delphi Technology for US$3.3 billion (approximately RMB 23.3 billion). Although the two parties had some disputes due to the impact of the epidemic and the purchase price was lowered, the transaction was not cancelled. , The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second half of this year. By then, the name Delphi will completely disappear in the long river of history, and the essence of the old Delphi will continue under the name Abofor.

Looking at Johnson Controls, it was once the world's largest supplier of auto parts and seats, but in recent years it has gradually separated from the auto industry and turned to the construction industry. In 2016, Johnson Controls divested its two major business units, car seats and car interiors, into an independent listed company, Adient. In the following year, Johnson Controls sold Scott Safety, a safety equipment segment, to 3M to repay debts. In 2018, Johnson Controls packaged and sold its battery business. After that, Johnson Controls focused its efforts on the construction industry, and the seat and interiors business conquered the market under the name of Adient.

Enter "others" disk

Either because of its technical product expertise, or because of its profound historical accumulation, it was "swallowed" by other companies. This is the common destiny faced by WABCO, Cypress, Osram and GKN.

In the field of braking systems for commercial vehicles in the world, especially in Europe, WABCO and Knorr-Bremse share the world. WABCO's prominent position in the commercial vehicle field and technical product advantages make it difficult for ZF to stop. On May 30 this year, ZF announced that it had obtained all regulatory approvals to formally acquire WABCO for USD 7 billion (approximately RMB 49.5 billion). In the future, WABCO will no longer be an independent company, but a division of ZF. The name WABCO will also disappear from the list of the top 100 parts and components worldwide.

Cypress is in a similar situation to WABCO, and was acquired because of its excellence. Just as the products of ZF and WABCO are highly complementary, and the acquisition allows ZF to be among the top three in the global component rankings, Cypress and Infineon are also highly complementary, and this transaction can help Infineon Ling has become the world's eighth largest semiconductor supplier and the world's largest automotive semiconductor supplier. To this end, Infineon bid 9 billion euros (approximately RMB 71.6 billion), the transaction was completed in April this year, Cypress merged with Infineon.

If the above-mentioned two acquisitions are both considered happy, the acquisition of Osram by Ams Semiconductor and the acquisition of GKN by British investment company Melrose have been twists and turns, and even the latter has been mixed with hostile takeover factors. In December last year, the acquisition of Osram, which had lasted for nearly a year, ushered in the finale. The proposal of Austrian sensor and chip manufacturer Ams to acquire Osram was passed. This transaction can be said to be a "snake swallowing elephant". In addition, Bloomberg recently quoted Ames’ internal documents as saying that Ames is planning to further split Osram after completing the acquisition of Osram, and divest and sell its automotive business unit.

GKN's experience may be more sympathetic. At the beginning of 2018, the British investment company Melrose proposed to buy GKN at a low price, which was strongly opposed by the latter. In order to resist Melrose's hostile takeover, GKN even announced a merger with Dana, intending to build the largest transmission giant in the global automotive field, but in the end, capital forces won and Melrose won the acquisition of GKN with a narrow advantage.

Changed the club in a blink of an eye

In the global top 100 parts list, many companies are owned by automakers, Marelli is one of them, and it is a member of Fiat Chrysler Group (FCA). However, in order to raise funds, in 2019, FCA sold Marelli to CK Holdings for 5.8 billion euros (approximately RMB 46.2 billion), which belongs to Japanese parts manufacturer Cornell. After the merger of Magneti Marelli and CK Holdings, it operates under the name of Magneti Marelli CK Holdings, headquartered in Japan.

French parts manufacturer Faurecia has taken a fancy to Hitachi's car navigation system manufacturer Clarion. In October 2018, Faurecia announced that it would acquire a majority stake in Clarion from Hitachi and subsequently achieve 100% holding. In March 2019, Clarion officially became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Faurecia. Faurecia then announced the establishment of the fourth largest business unit-"Faurecia Clarion Automotive Electronics". The new business unit integrates Clarion, and all businesses of the previously acquired Parrot Automotive and Jiangxi Haobangshou Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. .

At present, even if the shock wave of the epidemic has caused the parts industry to "discontinue" a lot, the reform of the auto industry does not stop, and the mergers and acquisitions and reorganizations in the parts field will not stop. In the future, more parts companies may "disappear". There are bound to be some new entrants.