By now, Czech truck giant Tatra must be feeling a little like that girl everyone wants to date but nobody wants to marry. For the fourth time in the past 12 years, the company has found itself in the hands of a new American owner.

Tatra's current majority owner, the Terex Corporation of America, announced July 26 the sale of its 80.5 percent stake to a group of private investors led by an American. The deal has raised concern among many analysts and industry experts because U.S. interests so far have an unimpressive record in the Czech defense industry.

Specifics about the deal and the investors have not been released, but Ronald Adams, currently a member of the supervisory board of Tatra, said in a statement July 31 that he was leading the group. He said more information would be released when the deal is finished, expected in late August or early September.

Adams, who is originally from Texas but has been living in north Moravia since joining the Tatra board in 2002, said the new owners bought the truck maker through a special acquisition company, Blue River. He said the group plans to expand Tatra's operations into new markets.

Though Adams has a solid track record with the company, officials there and industry experts have said they are concerned about the buyout.

"It's certainly positive that the new owners will be backed by Mr. Adams, who is quite familiar with Tatra, but the question is who the other investors are and what their objectives will be," said Jiří Hynek, president of the Association of the Defense Industry (AOP). "To be honest, U.S. investors in this country's defense industry have not proved themselves in the past."

In past deals with defense companies, Hynek said, American investors have all pledged expansion and beefed-up balance sheets but have largely failed to follow through on their commitments. Examples include Tatra and jet maker Aero Vodochody, which Boeing promised to take into new markets when it bought a majority stake in the company in 1998. This never happened.

Pavel Baroň, head of the trade unions at Tatra, echoed Hynek's point: "Every Tatra owner since 1990 talked about expanding production, but it never happened," he said.

The trade union leader said Tatra should be in the hands of another vehicle company. Russian truck company Kamaz and also Tata of India were both reportedly interested in buying Tatra from Terex last spring.

Tatra's trials

Tatra was not a core-business for Terex, which focuses on manufacturing machinery for the construction industry. But the company arguably had the most success of any investor in the past decade, though some critics still say it didn't do enough to find new business opportunities for Tatra.

In the two years since Terex bought the company in 2003, Tatra has seen both output and profit increase. It made 548 vehicles in the first six months of 2006, nearly 10 percent more than in the same period last year. Tatra made 150 million Kč ($6.76 million) in the first half of the year on 1.8 billion Kč in revenue. Last year, those figures were 5 million Kč and 3.65 billion Kč.

Tatra's previous two American owners were less successful.

GSR, which took over in 1993, could not get the company out of the debt it accrued during communism, when it produced 15,000 trucks a year.

The truck maker remained on the verge of bankruptcy throughout the 90s. In 2001, SDC International privatized Tatra and triggered its recovery. But the company failed in its pledge to increase exports to new markets.

Rumors about Terex's withdrawal surfaced after an amended law on classified information took effect in early January. Following the amendment, executives on the board of directors or the supervisory board of companies involved in military deals are now required to hold security vetting certificates. Only Czech citizens can get this clearance.

Before the law took effect, foreigners without security certificates could sit on the supervisory boards but not on the board of directors. In theory, this means Adams will have to step down from his position, but he can still be a partial owner of the company.

Terex never confirmed that this law was at the roots of its decision to exit.

Ronald M. DeFeo, chairman and CEO of the company, said in late July that Terex was pulling out because Tatra did not fit in its portfolio.

"We view the Tatra commercial and military truck business as non-core operations," he said July 26. "At this time, we've reached an agreement to sell Tatra to a group of private equity investors."

Igor Vlček, Tatra's chairman of the board, said the sale should have no effect on production.