Re: "Blackstone Could Sell Control Of Leica In €1 Billion Deal "
tigerlo wrote:
stgrove wrote:
If Chinese other than DJI, I have serious concern for the future. As was pointed out Kaufmann likes photography and when he speaks within the company all listen. Without him at the rudder, where will the company go? $15k M bodies and $25k S4 body. Yikes.
I don’t understand why Chinese entity is a concern here. From history Chinese business strategy mindset is to make things cheaper and sell more.
Sure they are very good at producing things in very high quality, very efficiently and at scale. And while I have a lot of respect for Chinese culture, I think valueing and preserving heritage is not exactly their strength. E.g. compare how they rebuild or maintain their historical sites (in and around Beijing for example) and compare that to how it's done in Europe (in Rome, Venice, Paris, etc..) - they tend to turn things into mass tourism Disneyland, completely ruining the sites that would otherwise be among the most amazing in the world.
And while I previously said we shouldn't compare to DJI too much (as they were a consumer-facing photography-adjacent company before, whereas here we're talking private equity), even with DJI I wonder how much of Hasselblad is still being designed and manufactured in Sweden? Sure they do something on the cameras so they can put "handmade in Sweden" on the bodies, but is that really legit?
Imo you can't optimize Leica's cost structure too much (e.g. by moving more production out of Germany) without ruining the company in the long run. This won't show up in any spreadsheet though.
Jan 25, 2026 at 08:55 AM
Previous versions of fjablo's message #16973868 « "Blackstone Could Sell Control Of Leica In €1 Billion Deal " »
