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FRANKFURT, July 23 (Reuters) - German truck and engineering group MAN does not want to part with its truck business, Chief Executive Rudolf Rupprecht was quoted on Wednesday as saying.
"We have no intention to sell the commercial vehicles unit," he told Focus Money weekly in a summary of an article due to appear on Thursday. "Building commercial vehicles is our core business and we want to make it even stronger."
Sources told Reuters earlier this month that German carmaker Volkswagen was interested in MAN's trucks and had held preliminary talks with the company and its top shareholder Allianz . Speculation about a takeover has boosted MAN's stock by about 14 percent since then.
Consolidation in the truck sector is widely expected when Sweden's Volvo , the world's second-biggest truck maker, sells its 45-percent stake in rival Scania , which it must do by early next year for regulatory reasons.
VW currently offers only small and medium-sized trucks in the European market, alongside its range of cars, and has said it would be interested in expanding its commercial vehicles business to include larger vehicles, such as those made by MAN.
But analysts say a deal between VW and MAN would seem to make more sense for MAN -- which makes marine diesel engines, plant equipment, printing machinery and space rocket components as well as trucks and buses -- than for VW.