France’s Peugeot family is ready to consider raising its stake in PSA Group, the carmaker it controlled until a government-backed bailout in 2014, former chairman, Thierry Peugeot, and other members of the founding clan said.
“We can make the effort,” Thierry Peugeot told the Les Echos business daily. “We should move decisively; there are a lot of us who think the same way.”
The French state and China’s Dongfeng Motor each took 14% stakes in PSA in a €3 billion capital increase in 2014, diluting the Peugeots’ holding to the same level and ending family control of the carmaker as it teetered close to bankruptcy.
Two years into the company’s ebullient recovery under new PSA chief executive, Carlos Tavares, the government is now considering the sale of all or part of its stake, officials say.
However, Thierry’s cousin Robert Peugeot, who heads the main family holding company, sounded a more prudent note in the joint interview while maintaining that the family was “open” to making a new investment.
“We don’t have unlimited resources,” he told Les Echos in a rare group interview.
Thierry Peugeot was forced off PSA’s board after voicing public dissent over the French government gaining a stake in the automaker. He wanted PSA to raise money by selling shares on the market.
