ABB CEO rules out major acquisitions

ZURICH: Swiss engineering group ABB is not planning any big acquisitions at the moment, its chief executive said in an interview with a German newspaper on Monday.

"We're not planning any bigger acquisitions in the short term," Ulrich Spiesshofer, who took over as chief executive last year, told Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "We have done three big acquisitions recently: Thomas & Betts, Power One and Baldor Electric.

Adding anything else at the moment would be wrong," he said. He said ABB was currently focusing on integrating the acquired companies and on fixing problems in its Power Systems unit, ruling out a sale of the business.

ABB had trimmed its medium-term sales and profit forecasts in September, and Spiesshofer confirmed these targets. "We gave our targets until 2020 in September and we still stand by them, of course," he said.