Continental, Germany's top automotive components group, is seeking to take over an Indian tyres company to fill a blank in its worldwide coverage, its chief executive was quoted saying Saturday.
Manfred Wennemer said Hanover-based Continental was looking at "30 to 40" candidates for takeover around the world, the magazine Auto Motor und Sport reported.
Continental recently spent 11.4 billion euros to acquire Siemens' VDO car electronics unit, but is not sated yet. The magazine said it still had a war chest of 4 billion euros (5.9 billion dollars) to invest.
Wennemer said Continental mainly wanted to close gaps in Asia and the Americas.
"In tyres, we are searching in Asia, mainly in China, for takeover targets," he said. The group also sought growth in India.
"As far as our tyre business is concerned, we want to get into the Indian market. It's the last blank on the world map of our tyres business," he said.
Most of the acquisitions being contemplated round the world involved less than 100 million euros each, he said. ( Dpa )