Adidas-Salomon (D-91074 Herzogenaurach; www.adidas-salomon.com) has agreed to sell its Salomon winter sports division to the Amer Group (FIN-00610 Helsinki; www.amersports.com). The transaction values the business at about EUR 485m, based on 2004 figures. Amer already owns ski manufacturer Atomic (A-5541 Altenmarkt; www.atomicsnow.com).

With this deal, which still has to be approved by EU competition authorities, Amer will overtake the current leader, Rossignol (F-38509 Voiron; www.rossignol.com). The French manufacturer produces some 1.2m pairs of skis a year, and Amer with Salomon will move up to around 1.7m pairs.

Despite sales of EUR 653m in 2004, Salomon posted an operating result of just EUR 9m, reflecting a constant downward trend over the past few years. Only recently, in December 2004, Adidas was talking of shifting some of its production from Annecy / France to Romania and China. Reports suggest that Salomon – the world market leader for ski boots – will concentrate on this segment plus bindings, with Atomic responsible for skis.

Within slightly less than a year, this is already the fifth major transaction in the winter sports market, which is characterised by very tough competition. Earlier this year, the venerable Blizzard Sport (A-5730 Mittersill; www.blizzard-ski.com), was sold to the Austrian family-owned Stöckl group. There is now also talk in this connection of a cooperation agreement with the Ukrainian plant of Mukachevo belonging to another Austrian-based ski manufacturer, Fischer (A-4910 Ried; www.fischer-ski.com), in which Stöckl also has a stake. Due to the absence of a successor to its founder, Laurent Boix-Vives, Rossignol was sold to US-based Quiksilver (Huntingdon Beach, California; www.quiksilver.com) – see PIE 03, 2005. In mid-2004, Völkl (D-94315 Straubing; www.voelkl.de) changed hands and now is owned by K2 (Carlsbad, California / USA; www.k2sports.com).