🎄 Last-minute Christmas deal: Heavily indebted auto supplier ZF sells its ADAS business to Samsung subsidiary Harman. Valuation: around €1.5 billion.
🛷 Smartphone on wheels: Harman takes over cameras, radar and ADAS controllers. The goal is a next-gen in-car platform from a single source. Closing is planned by 2026. Harman’s brands include JBL and Bang & Olufsen.
🔥 Damage control, not decorations: Nearly €11 billion in debt and more than €700 million in annual interest costs are forcing the German group to retreat from capital-intensive electronics.
📋 Long “Naughty list”: While Santa checks his list, ZF sharpens the red pen. Up to 14,000 jobs may go by 2028. The ADAS sale is an attempt to save Christmas before the sleigh crashes.
🥢 Kimchi instead of potato salad: Around 3,750 ZF employees are getting a new boss from South Korea. Less bland recipes, more Korean spice – with hopes that budgets and innovation finally get more flavor too.
Background
Samsung acquired Harman in 2017 for $8 billion. Since then, the group has been steadily expanding its automotive electronics and in-car audio business to reduce reliance on smartphones and memory chips.
Software-defined vehicles are accelerating the pace. Samsung expects the market for ADAS and central vehicle controllers to grow from $42.2 billion in 2025 to $65.6 billion by 2030.
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