American private-equity giant Carlyle Group is making one more push for a
stake in China's Xugong Group Construction Machinery, this time
offering to take a 45% stake for the same price it had intended to
pay for 50%, the Wall Street Journal
reported. Carlyle will pay US$232.8 million for the reduced
stake, announced Xugong's listed unit, Xugong Science & Technology, in a statement Friday. This final deal comes about a year and a
half after Carlyle first offered to buy 85% of the company for US$375
million. A year later, with approval for the deal unlikely, Carlyle
made the bid for the 50% stake. No reason has been given for the
multiple restructurings of the deal but there have been growing
concerns in China over foreign firms gaining control of state assets
at undervalued prices in recent years.