The supposed attempt of floating Ducati by its German owner, Volkswagen Group through Audi, turns out to be in vain. After pressure from the German labour union, Volkswagen Group has decided not to sell off Ducati. They probably think it is unfair to hang this legendary motorcycle mark out to dry to recover some lost money due to the diesel-emission cheating scandal. Brands like Polaris Industries, Harley-Davidson, Bajaj, PAI Industries and Royal Enfield were narrowing in to buy Ducati. As a stated by Bloomberg, labour union thinks Ducati as a brand works completely different from its parent VW’s sales and marketing strategies of selling to generate revenues. Just the range of the bidding figures is enough to baffle your mind of the brand value of Ducati, which is near $1.94billion to $2.24billion. Imagine these numbers against their total earnings of $150million.
The member board guiding VW has 50% seats out to the labour union, hence they were able stop this decision. This is very likely this bid could start again in the near future as Ducati is not really a cash cow for VW. But it does hold investment value which will probably rise with time and possible efforts by VW. This looks like a setback for VW Group as it is in need of recuperation for that $3billion loss due to the diesel-emission cheating scandal. For now, Claudio Domenicali could tell his worried work force that the sale of Ducati is halted.