ABB supports nation's antitrust drive, top executive says

The head of one of the world's top engineering groups has voiced support for China's antitrust investigations.

Uli Spiesshofer, chief executive officer of Swiss giant ABB Ltd, said that despite growing concerns internationally that China is targeting foreign companies in its antitrust inquiries, he congratulated Beijing on its actions to make the market more competitive.

"I do not share the same concerns," said Spiesshofer, speaking during the company's annual Capital Market Day briefing in London.

"I would like to congratulate the Chinese government for its actions in taking Chinese business practices to the next level. These are efforts that we welcome.

"ABB differentiates itself from the competition on technology, on customer intimacy and value, and we are ideally positioned, especially in the new context, to be a strong partner," Spiesshofer said of its relationship with the world's second-largest economy.

ABB will stay abreast of its long-term plans, and will continue to make available the right technology to support China's economic growth, he said.

The chief executive stressed that China will remain an important market and a platform to take the company to the next level.

"China has been an important market for ABB for more than 100 years, and it will be a very important market for us in the next-level strategy. It is not only a market where we can sell a lot of our offerings. We have in China a fantastic technology base."

ABB employs more than 2,000 research and development staff in China and provides its Chinese customers with a wide portfolio of power and automation equipment, through a total workforce in the country of 19,000 people in 109 cities.

The group operates in 100 countries and employs 145,000 people.

ABB's revenue in China last year was $5.4 billion, about 12 percent of its total, of which 40 percent was from power and the rest from its automation divisions. During the year, it invested about $1.8 billion in China.

Despite China's recent economic slowdown, Spiesshofer noted that the country's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) offered new opportunities for his company.

"This plan is about energy efficiency, smart grids and renewables, and we are ideally positioned to help with the industrial upgrade, as our robot and automation capabilities are already there. So while China's GDP growth might not be as high as in the past, the investment in infrastructure, in automation and in utilities are favoring ABB very strongly."

China needs to focus on less energy consumption per unit of GDP, a measure known as energy intensity, through the increased use of environmentally friendly renewable technologies such as solar and wind, he said.

ABB has signed a strategic agreement with Chinese company BYD Co Ltd to collaborate on energy storage building technology for grid-connected, micro-grid, solar and marine storage applications. ABB also eyes China's automation and robot market and collaborates on innovation projects.

ABB's YuMi, the world's first truly collaborative robot, has been developed in China to meet the flexible and agile production needs of the consumer electronics industry.

In the next decade, China's annual growth in robot sales is forecast to be about 40 percent, industry officials said.

"We expect to grow this business very strongly. We have been able to grow China ahead of the rest of the ABB portfolio, and we are firmly committed to keep the investments, to educate our people, to train the workforce, and to a future as one of the strongest growing companies in China," Spiesshofer said.