DaimlerChrysler 7% Owner Kuwait Investment Authority Backs Management

FRANKFURT, April 9 Reuters reported that DaimlerChrysler AG Chief Executive Juergen Schrempp has won a vote of confidence from the group's second-biggest shareholder on the eve of its annual general meeting, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper said Schrempp and other DaimlerChrysler executives briefed the Kuwait Investment Authority, which owns seven percent of the autos giant, on trading and strategy and the outlook for the flagship Mercedes division last week.

It quoted a KIA spokesman as saying that KIA managing director Salah Al Falah had expressed his full support for the management and strategy at DaimlerChrysler.

"Kuwait is a long-term investor and we are going to be in DaimlerChrysler for some time. There is a solid business in the company," the KIA spokesman was quoted as saying.

DaimlerChrysler executives are preparing to face an angry crowd of small shareholders in Berlin on Wednesday. In February, the group slashed its profit forecast for 2002, warning of tough conditions in the United States, where it has pledged to return its Chrysler division to breakeven this year.

Chrysler sank to an adjusted operating loss of 2.2 billion euros in 2001 from a profit of 531 million euros the previous year.

KIA is the second-biggest DaimlerChrysler shareholder after Deutsche Bank , which owns about 12 percent. Deutsche wants to sell its stake eventually as part of a programme to dispose of non-core industrial holdings but has said it will do so cautiously and gradually.