USA –The joint venture between the leading air conditioning company JOHNSON CONTROLS and HITACHI is now not expected to take place until the first half of next year.
JOHNSON CONTROLS announced in December 2013 the purchase of 60% of HITACHI APPLIANCES’ global air conditioning business. This purchase excluded sales and service operations and certain other assets in Japan and the partnership was designed to include commercial and residential VRF and inverter technologies.
According to reports in the MILWAUKEE BUSINESS JOURNAL, the agreement was to be completed by the end of this year but would not take effect until the first half of 2015.
Speaking to financial analysts in Chicago, Bruce McDonald, Executive Vice President and Vice President of Johnson Controls revealed that the case had been delayed due to separation problems related to the attribution of shares and division of responsibilities.
Explaining the difficulties, he said: “It’s been very complicated to carve out of Hitachi. It’s very integrated in not just their appliance business, but some of their other campuses. So it’s taken us a long time to get the audited financials, agree on all of the carve-out issues around transfer pricing and things like that.”