"With this purchase, we want to give the stagnating MTB market a boost. SRAM is focusing on this market out of loyalty to the past as well as out of faith in its future", confirms Cees Lengers, Marketing Manager of SRAM Europe, the deal. SRAM is thus expanding its product range after derailleurs, hub gears and brakes to include the increasingly important suspension technology. The preliminary agreement has been signed, the audit is underway and the joint future plans are to be announced at a press conference in Taipei by mid-March. Consequences for the products of both manufacturers are not expected until 2004.