Indian car maker Mahindra has been negotiating a deal to acquire the legendary Italian automotive design firm Pininfarina for quite some time now, but it has just been confirmed that the Indian car maker will take over Pininfarina in just a few weeks. The legendary Italian design firm was created in 1930 and has designed cars for Ferrari, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and others.
The company has been in financial trouble for some time now. In 2006 the Italian firm had a staff of 2700, but today only 800 are employed. As of now the deal is not fully confirmed, and the deal could go either way as the valuation of Pininfarina is underway and because Pininfarina has not made any real money in quite some time. However, the design firm is confident that the acquisition deal would be signed in the next few weeks.
There has been no concrete details about the acquisition or an asking price as of yet, but we do know that the deal isn’t just with the Mahindra Group, but would also be with Tech Mahindra, a huge IT and engineering services company. This is good news for both companies and also an indication that the Italian firm might be interested in building cars and not just designing them.
