“Ford Motor Company is not in discussions with BMW or any other company regarding an interest in the Volvo Car Corporation. We have seen this kind of speculation for the past year, as Ford Motor Company has been assessing our operations and portfolio — as any good business does and we will continue to do.”

A Ford spokesman issued this denial statement following several media reports that BMW was in talks with FoMoCo aiming at a sale of Volvo. The rumors started out from an article posted on Autocar magazine a few weeks ago and climaxed last week with reports from Swedish newspaper Goteborgs Posten and the Financial Times.

Theoretically and according to Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy, Ford could raise around $8 billion for Volvo which is FoMoCo’s strongest asset in the PAG Group after the sale of Aston Martin for $925 million back in March, 2007. Comparatively, Murphy estimated that a combined sale of both could bring back to Ford around $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion. So, is it a case of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” or simply a case of creative imagination on the behalf of journos? Guess we wont find out… Via: Reuters

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