Daimler in Talks With Cerberus to Sell Chrysler Stake

Daimler AG, the world's second- largest maker of luxury cars, is in talks with buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management LP to sell its remaining stake in former U.S. arm Chrysler LLC.

Cerberus said it approached Daimler about acquiring the German automaker's 19.9 percent holding in Chrysler. Neither Cerberus nor Daimler gave a timetable or the value of any deal.

A sale would sever the last Chrysler ties for Daimler, which sold 80.1 percent of the third-largest U.S. automaker to Cerberus in August 2007 as losses mounted. Chrysler continues to damp Daimler's earnings, erasing 373 million euros ($548 million) from second-quarter profit. Daimler bought Chrysler in 1998 for $36 billion.

“It would be a surprisingly positive development, though we're not talking about a lot of money here. It would be close to zero,'' said Juergen Pieper, an analyst at Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt, who rates Daimler a “weak buy.''

Daimler, the owner of Mercedes-Benz brand luxury cars, aims to exit the Chrysler holding within a few weeks, Manager-Magazin reported today, citing people it didn't identify. Daimler doesn't plan to pay New York-based Cerberus to take the stake and wants compensation for supporting Chrysler's sales in Europe, the German magazine reported. Bloomberg