Swiss engineering group hints at large automation acquisitions

Geneva: Swiss engineering group ABB sees room for large acquisitions in the automation sector, its interim chief executive said in a newspaper interview on Saturday.

Michel Demare said the company had been wise to leave its $6 billion cash pile untouched in recent months, when stock prices slid and made previously highly-valued targets more affordable.

"Big acquisitions will be more related to automation than energy," he told Switzerland's Le Temps, noting the company is already heavily engaged in the latter sector.

ABB, which sells equipment to utilities and to oil and gas companies, has been shielded from the worst of the global credit crisis because demand for power infrastructure has been very resilient in emerging markets like China and India, Demare said.

"In automation, the oil, gas, metals and minerals sectors are seeing very strong growth. ABB's good fortune is that we are much more oriented to those industries than to construction and consumption," he said.

On Thursday, ABB posted a 34 per cent rise in second-quarter net profit, to $975 million, and said it had $6 billion of net cash at the end of the second quarter.