ABSTRACT
When a brownfield investment is made, existing industrial capacities change their owner. Sales of this type are usually made in times of crisis. The German automotive supply industry has been booming for seven years, but there has also been a wave of takeovers. The article provides a quantitative survey of the takeovers of German automotive suppliers in the period 2009-2014 and investigates the reasons for the private-equity firms’ involvement and exits, the conditions under which they made their exit decisions and the processes their exits involved. It is shown that private equity firms investing in the automotive supply industry sell their companies more often to buyers from newly industrialized countries than do strategic investment firms, and that this enabled buyers from newly industrialized countries to acquire companies with a level of technological expertise equal to that of the companies acquired by buyers from industrialized countries.
