[Andrew]

It looks like the first brand Ford is going to sell will be Aston Martin. What is interesting are the companies looking to buy. LVMH (famous for Louis Vutton) and Richemont, luxury company that owns Cartier among other luxury brands.

 

[RQQ]

That multiplier seems to be at least 5x too high.

Would be great if BMW or VAG got involved, those are about the only two brands I can think of that would do justice to AM.

Lets cross our fingers and see what happens...

 

[M!!]

i wonder how those luxury brands can even run aston martin; R&D will be going backwards... but really, they have too much money.

i agree that BMW would be a good potential buyer.
VAG... i don't know. the recent Bentley products are ugly.

 

[Boxer]

This is a really interesting situation. Ford apparently is valuing Aston at close to $2 billion. One Investment Bank put a value closer to $400 million on Aston. Given the thin profitability and sales number the second number is probably much closer to reality. I do hope that experienced "car people" who understand both the engineering and financial aspects of the business end up buying Aston. I would see both Porsche and Lotus (Proton) as good choices. Worst case would be a similar situation to what happened with TVR.

I find it quite interesting that they are not selling Aston and Jaguar as a package. Jaguars financial problems are the likely reason. As a package the value is probably $1.