Scania Models

Scania AB is a global manufacturer of heavy trucks (British English: lorries), buses, and diesel engines, with its head office in Södertälje, Sweden. Scania has production facilities in Europe and Latin America. In addition, there are assembly plants in ten countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. Scania's sales and service organisation and finance companies are worldwide. In total the company employ 35 000 people around the world.

Scania AB (Scania is Latin for the providence of Skåne) came from a merge between the two companies; VABIS and Scania. VABIS (Vagnsfabriksaktiebolaget i Södertälje) was founded in 1891 in Södertälje, 35kilometres (22mi) south of Stockholm, and manufactured wheels and train carts. Maskinaktiebolaget Scania was founded in 1900 in Malmö in the south of Sweden and was in the beginning a manufacturer of bicycles but soon also of cars and trucks. The merge in 1911 gave the company the name Scania-Vabis. The new company concentrated on manufacturing cars, trucks and buses.

After some economic difficulties in 1921, new capital came from Stockholms Enskilda Bank owned by the Wallenberg family and Scania-VABIS became a solid and technically, high standing, company.

In 1969, Scania-VABIS merged with SAAB, and formed Saab-Scania AB. When Saab-Scania was split in 1995, the name of the truck and bus division changed simply to Scania AB. One year later was Scania AB introduced on the stock exchange.

Many examples of Scania, Vabis and Scania-Vabis commercial and military vehicles can be seen at the Marcus Wallenberg-hallen (the Scania Museum) in Södertälje.

The two major stockholders of Scania are:

• Volkswagen Group is Scania's biggest shareholder, with a 68.6% voting stake in Scania. It gained this by first buying Volvo's stake in 2000, after the latter's aborted takeover attempt, increasing it to 36.4% in 2007, and then buying the remainder from Investor AB in March 2008. The deal was approved by regulatory bodies in July 2008. Scania AB then became the ninth brand in the Volkswagen Group.
• MAN AG holds a 17.01% voting stake in Scania. Notably Volkswagen also owns a 29.9% voting stake in MAN, acquired in 2007.

Aborted Volvo takeover

On 7 August 1999, Volvo announced it had agreed to acquire a majority share in Scania. Volvo was to buy the 49.3% stake in Scania that was owned by Investor AB, Scania's main shareholder. The acquisition, for $7.5 billion (60.7 billion SEK), would have created the world's second-largest manufacturer of heavy trucks, behind DaimlerChrysler. The cash for the deal came from Volvo selling its car division to Ford in January 1999.

The deal eventually failed, after the European Union had disapproved of the affair, saying it would create a company with almost 100% market share in the Nordic markets.

Aborted MAN takeover

In September 2006, the German truckmaker MAN AG launched a €10.3bn hostile offer to acquire Scania AB. Scania's CEO Leif Östling was forced to apologise for comparing the bid of MAN to a "Blitzkrieg". MAN AG later dropped its hostile offer, but in January 2008 MAN increased their voting rights in Scania up to 17%.