Swedish venture capital company Cevian announced on December 27 that it sells its entire holding in the truck manufacturer AB Volvo to Chinese Geely. Cevian's holding in AB Volvo amounted to 8.2 percent of the share capital and 15.6 percent of the votes — the largest holding measured in capital and the second largest in votes.
Based on Volvo's closing price before Christmas, Cevian's post is worth approximately SEK 27 billion (approximately $3.3 billion).
Geely has been the largest owner of Volvo Cars (the Göteborg-based passenger car manufacturer).

The company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, founded in 1986, manufactured its first car in 1998 but didn’t take the step to the international scene until the purchase of Volvo Cars in 2009. Four years later, the London Taxi Company, producer of the iconic London taxi was bought.

But it was in 2017 that the international expansion took off seriously. Geely has been on a global shopping round this year, buying half of Malaysian car manufacturer Proton, the British sports car brand Lotus and now 8 percent of truck manufacturer Volvo in the deal with Cevian.

When Geely took over Volvo Cars from Ford, the doubts were many. How could an almost unknown Chinese company succeed where the car giant Ford failed? But the critics were wrong. The Swedish manufacturer has almost doubled production since the Chinese company took over in 2010. The last year with Ford as owner, Volvo Cars lost SEK 5 billion, compared with the company earning 10 billion during the first three quarters of 2017 alone. For a long time Geely lived in the shadow of the big government owned car companies in China. Ten years ago Geely was the 17th largest car brand in China. Today, they are number five and will have manufactured around 1.2 million cars in 2017. Together with the subsidiaries Volvo and Malaysian Proton, the group will reach around two million manufactured vehicles, placing them just after BMW in size. Geely is on the way to become a global success story in class with the telecom giant Huawei and PC manufacturer Lenovo.
Geely has been reluctant to comment on this latest purchase. Exactly what their plans are with the ownership in AB Volvo — how to go about cooperating with the other major owner, Industrivärden, and if the plan is to buy additional shares — have not been disclosed.