Motherson Sumi to buy Finland's PKC for $609 million

HELSINKI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India-based car parts maker and engineering group Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd has made a 571 million-euro ($609 million)offer to buy Finland's PKC Group, a maker of wiring harnesses for trucks, the companies announced late on Thursday.

At 23.55 euros per PKC share, the offer price is 51 percent above PKC's last closing share price. The shares were up 48 percent at 23.11 euros by 0917 GMT on Friday.

"(PKC) are experts in the commercial vehicle segment and we are strong in passenger vehicles, so there's a tremendous amount of synergies that can be created," Motherson Chairman Vivek Chaand Sehgal told a news conference in Helsinki.

Shares in Motherson Sumi, which also makes rear view mirrors, bumpers and dashboards and is valued at around $6.7 billion, rose as much as 4 percent on Friday.

The proposed acquisition will double the revenues from Motherson Sumi's wiring harness business, G.N. Gauba, chief financial officer, told Reuters.

Motherson has set a target to achieve annual sales of $18 billion by 2020, up from total revenues of $5.7 billion in its last fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2016.

The deal is likely to be financed using Motherson Sumi's own cash and undrawn bank credit, Gauba said, adding it would finalise the funding plan once the acquisition is approved.

PKC, which last year had sales of about 846 million euros ($900 million) and a core profit of 64 million euros, said its board backed the offer.

"We consider approval of the offer very likely and the price per share very good," market analysis firm Inderes said in a note to investors.

($1 = 0.9401 euros)

(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell, Additional reporting by Aditi Shah in New Delhi; Editing by Leslie Adler, Greg Mahlich)