Siemens ends Osram chapter with stake sale

munich — Siemens AG’s complete withdrawal from the lighting industry further scales back the once sprawling German conglomerate, as chief executive officer Joe Kaeser offloads assets from trains to medical scanners to household equipment in rapid succession.

The Munich-based company completed the sale of its remaining 17 stake in light manufacturer Osram Licht AG, raising about €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) and exiting a business in which it was involved for the better part of a century.

Siemens sold 18.1 million shares that were offered to institutional investors, the company said in statements after the market closed Wednesday.

The stock sold at €65.05 apiece, and didn’t get enough demand from investors for all the shares, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Osram shares fell the most in more than a year. For Kaeser, the move came after Osram’s value more than doubled since an initial public offering in 2013, and a week after he unveiled a proposed combination of Siemens’s train business with that of Alstom SA of France.

Siemens has also withdrawn from businesses making phones, hearing aids and ovens. For Osram, a former division of Europe’s biggest engineering company, the severing of ties comes after its own strategic shift into high-technology as energy-saving light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, eclipse classic light bulbs. Osram shares fell as much as 5.1 per cent, the most since July 27, 2016, and were trading down 3.9 per cent at €64.47 at 11:54 am in Frankfurt. — Bloomberg