Hitachi, a Japanese multinational conglomerate company, completed the acquisition an 80.1% stake in the power grids business of ABB, a Swiss-Swedish multinational automation corporation, for $9.1bn ($6.4bn equity and $2.7bn net debt). "Since announcing our intention to divest Power Grids to Hitachi, ABB has made significant progress in becoming a more customer-focused and simplified organization. We believe Hitachi is the best owner for Power Grids and its next stage of development, building on the solid foundation achieved under ABB’s previous ownership. ABB remains committed to using net cash proceeds from the transaction for a share buyback program. Our goal is to execute this in an efficient and responsible way, taking account of the prevailing circumstances,” Peter Voser, ABB Chairman.