FRANKFURT, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The chairman and largest shareholder of German rail technology provider Vossloh denied he was planning to delist the company or merge it with his own company Knorr Bremse, which makes rail and commercial vehicle brakes.
"I do not intend to take Vossloh private. Nor do I intend to merge it with Knorr Bremse," Heinz Hermann Thiele told Germany's WirtschaftsWoche magazine in comments published on Saturday.
Thiele instead is considering whether to find a strong partner for Vossloh's diesel locomotive business who would be interested in forming a joint venture - an idea the 72-year-old wanted to look into by the middle of next year.
The owner of Knorr Bremse, who controls a 25 percent blocking minority in Vossloh, won a power struggle over the rail technology group, prompting the founding family to announce on Tuesday it was selling a 22 percent stake on the market.
Irrespective of the placement, Thiele reaffirmed he had no intention to lift his Vossloh stake above 30 percent, which would trigger a mandatory takeover bid that would allow the remaining Vossloh investors to tender their shares.
He also denied planning to sell the commercial vehicles brakes business of Knorr Bremse to German auto parts group ZF Friedrichshafen in order to merge the rest with Vossloh.
"It is incomprehensible and insulting to imply I would do such nonsense," he said, adding that he would have to be "dumb" to change the dual-pillar strategy of Knorr Bremse. (Reporting by Christiaan Hetzner; editing by David Evans)