The German groups SIEMENS and MANNESMANN have announced the merger of their automobile subcontracting activities in a 50-50 joint venture, creating the world's biggest supplier of automotive electronics systems. The new venture will be baptised ATECS SIEMENS AUTOMOTIVE and will be created from the consolidation of the subsidiaries of the two groups, MANNESMANN VDO (turnover of EUR 3.5 billion in 1999) and SIEMENS AUTOMOBILTECHNIK (turnover of EUR 3.3 billion in1999), which together have annual turnover of some EUR 7 billion and a workforce of 50,000. It is expected to start operating on 1 July of this year. SIEMENS has also announced its acquisition of the mobile phone activities of ROBERT BOSCH. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed but is thought to be close to EUR 100 million, according to several sources. These activities represent turnover of EUR 450 million with production capacity of 4.5 million portable telephones a year.