In May 1998, Daimler-Benz and Chrysler announced their intention to merge. Daimler-Benz was the largest industrial company in Europe, and Chrysler was Number 3 of the Big Three automakers in the United States. The merger resulted in DaimlerChrysler becoming (at the time) the second largest automobile company in the world, with 2000 sales exceeding $150 billion (General Motors reported sales in 2000 of $160 billion). (Note: In the aftermath of the merger, the expected synergies between the two companies€™ product lines did not emerge as powerfully as hoped. After a rocky nine-year €œmarriage,€ the two companies split up with Daimler selling Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management, a large U.S. private equity firm, in 2007.)
An interesting question is, €œAt the time of the merger, which of the two companies was the stronger?€ Below are summary data for the two companies, both overall and for their respective automotive divisions.

The amounts are in millions of Deutsche marks for Daimler-Benz and millions of U.S. dollars for Chrysler.
For the automotive segment information, net income is the operating income for the segment and total assets are the assets that are identifiable with the segment.
1. Compute the following for both companies for overall results and automotive division results:
a. Return on sales
b. Asset turnover
2. In comparing the ratios calculated in (1), why don€™t you have to make adjustments for currency differences?
3. Which company had more worldwide automotive sales in 1997? Note: Don€™t forget the currencydifference.

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Chrysler Overall Daimler-Benz Automotive Automotive Overall DM 124,050 8,042 DM 91,632 3,501 46,955 $61,147 2,805 60,418 Sales. $58,662 4,238 44,483 Net income Total assets. 137,099