This article first appeared in our June July August 2016 print edition. But with Pon’s $1.2 billion takeover offer for the Accell Group just announced, we thought it would be timely to post this interview with Pon.bike’s CEO Armin Landgraf.

On Tuesday 11th April the Accell Group issued a statement relating to a proposed takeover from Pon Holdings, valued at around €845 million (A$ 1.19 billion).

Ten years ago, this 15th July, the world’s first large scale bike sharing scheme, Velib (‘free bike’) was launched in Paris. It was an immediate success, soon racking up 20 million rides.

There is a rapidly growing demand for lithium ion batteries, not just for ebikes but for a host of other devices, including electric cars.

The Accell Group has published its 2016 financials, within which the firm topped €1 billion in turnover for the first time and held its course in line with expectations.

On Thursday 9th March Dorel, owner of Cycling Sports Group (CSG) reported that CSG had lost almost US$34 million (A$45 million) for 2016 compared to a profit of US$11 million (A$14.5 million) in 2015.

Latest figures for both the German and UK bicycle markets show a decline in sales and imports for 2016 compared to 2015.

Discovery Communications, the American global media giant which amongst many other properties is the owner of Eurosport and the Discovery Channel, has just made a major investment into the bicycle media market.

Despite more and more road bikes being made and sold with disc brakes some professional road racers are still vocally protesting about their danger.

Fox Factory, manufacture of Fox Shox and SRAM have been fighting each other in USA courts over patent infringement issues for well over a year.

SRAM is stopping production of its internal gear hubs and related parts due to declining sales, the company told customers last week. SRAM will accept orders for the parts until 3rd March 2017 but will review each order to see if it can be fulfilled with available inventory and production capacity.

Accell Group is one of the world’s largest bicycle companies which includes in its portfolio a range of different bike brands that are distributed in Australia.

Shimano's worldwide bicycle-related sales slumped 17.4 percent in the company's fiscal 2016 to 259,455 million yen (A$2.94 billion), while operating income in that segment declined 27.5 percent, the company announced on Tuesday 14th February.

A recent major purchase in the USA confirms that Trek’s recent strategy of taking over bicycle retailers in Australia is clearly part of a broader global strategy.

Yet another large diversified company is about to purchase a specialist bicycle business.