Earnings for Conti´s European passenger tire operations fall

HANOVER, Germany (Aug. 10)—Continental A.G. Chairman Stephan Kessel, bemoaning falling earnings in the company´s European passenger tire operations, blasted his colleagues across the continent. "The tire industry simply won´t learn," he said in a prepared statement. "At the end of the day, all of us will have shed a lot of blood in the tire business, and market shares will still be the same." Half-year 2000 pretax earnings by the passenger tire group fell 23.8 percent to $83.7 million, while sales rose 4.2 percent to $1.18 billion. Original equipment sales were up, but replacement sales were off somewhat, Conti said, and the increased costs of raw materials could not be passed on accordingly.