Is Italy's Ducati an object of German desire?

The Italian brand has achieved success on the race track despite competition from much larger manufacturers including the likes of Japan's Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki and Germany's BMW. For years dominant in the Superbike World Championship, Ducati in 2007 clinched top honours in the premiere Moto GP category with rider Casey Stoner. The buzz around the team increased last year when it signed to the team multiple world champion, Valentino Rossi.

But the iconic brand whose models are manufactured in the Borgo Panigale district of the Italian city Bologna, could soon have foreign owners. Several reports have linked German car manufacturers Audi and Daimler to a possible takeover of Ducati.Remarks made in February by Andrea Bonomi, chairman of Investindustrial, a private equity fund which currently owns the motorcycle company prompted the speculation.

"Ducati is now a perfect company but the further growth it requires needs the support of a world-class industrial partner," Bonomi told the London-based Financial Times.

Ducati sells about 40,000 motorcycles a year and controls about 9 percent of the market in sports motorcycles. In 2010 it generated earnings for interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of around 85 million euros (111 million dollars), reports say.

Analysts have pointed out that the company's debts - reportedly about 1.7 times its earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization - are low compared with most private equity portfolio companies. Bonomi has indicated that Investindustrial may be willing to part with Ducati for 1 billion euros. Referring to Ducati, Volkswagen Group Chairman Martin Winterkorn has reportedly said: "Red is a beautiful colour, but ..."

And Volkswagen, Audi's parent company, has replied: "no comment" to a report by British newspaper Motor Cycle News that the German luxury car brand has been given until mid-April the chance to come up with an offer for Ducati. However, Italian media have increasingly linked Audi to Ducati since Mercedes-Benz's parent company, Daimler this month denied it was looking into a takeover of Ducati.

Founded in 1926 as a radio manufacturer, Ducati has had a chequered business history. During Italy's post-war boom ownership passed from the heirs of founder Antonio Cavalieri Ducati to an Italian state-owned industrial conglomerate whose control ended more than three decades later with the Ducati at the brink of bankruptcy.

The brand's revival began in the late 1980s when, under the private ownership of the Castiglioni family, Ducati's racing success was also matched by steady sales of its road bike models.

US private equity fund Texas-Pacific Group took over Ducati in 1996, keeping the company's manufacturing operations in Italy, before selling it to Investindustrial in 2005. Now Ducati appears on the verge of another change of ownership, and no Italian investors have shown any interest, Sergio Rizzo recently lamented in an editorial in one of Italy's most prestigious newspapers, Corriere della Sera.

"It's impossible to believe that no one in Italy is prepared to bet on Ducati and that we will have to resign ourselves to seeing Valentino Rossi fly past on a 'German' bike," Rizzo wrote. The hopes of those like Rizzo were recently dashed by Lapo Elkann of the Italian Agnellli family which controls Fiat, the parent company of Ferrari.

Italian magazine Panorama, quoted Elkann as saying that he would be "deeply disappointed," if Ducati where to be sold abroad and that he would consider making an offer for the company. Elkann however, later said the remarks were fruit of "patriotic zeal" and that he had "never considered making a concrete offer for Ducati."