Peugeot Family Member: Opel Acquisition ‘Will Allow The Group To Conquer The Rest Of The World’

The acquisition of GM’s Opel unit will enable French automaker PSA Group to expand its business globally, Peugeot family shareholder Jean-Philippe Peugeot told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Currently, PSA has a significant presence in Europe and also markets its vehicles in South America and China. It also markets its vehicles in South America and China, and is planning to enter India and North America.

The purchase of Opel “will allow the group to conquer the rest of the world step by step. This remains an important goal for PSA,” said Jean-Philippe Peugeot in a joint interview with his cousin Robert Peugeot, who serves as chairman of PSA Group’s strategic committee.

The Peugeot family owns a cumulative 22.19 percent of the PSA Group’s voting rights and 13.68 percent of the firm’s capital.

In March, PSA Group reached an agreement to buy GM’s European Opel-Vauxhall unit from General Motors for €2.2 billion ($2.3 billion USD). The transaction propels the French company to be the second-largest automaker in Europe by sales volume, only behind the Volkswagen Auto Group.

Proving more perspective on the deal, Robert Peugeot stated that despite the existence of automakers that sell more cars, his firm’s goal in buying out Opel was to attain true economies of scale by producing at least three million vehicles in a single market.

“All large carmakers have a volume of three million cars in one important market,” Robert Peugeot told the paper.

Prior to the acquisition of Opel-Vauxhall, PSA’s was planning to return to North America via a ten-year plan that started with the introduction of a ride sharing service to collect and analyze data, followed by placing its own vehicles in the service. Whether the purchase of Opel will impact those plans is currently unclear, but there have been rumors that PSA is considering making Opel a global brand. PSA is not be able to market any GM-developed vehicles in any market GM currently competes in as part of a non-compete agreement as part of the deal between the two automakers.