Submarines Resurface as Growth Business

The submarine battle that erupted across the Baltic Sea was about business.

The Swedish government, upset with German ownership of Sweden’s biggest shipyard, last summer compelled ThyssenKrupp AG to sell its Kockums operation to Sweden’s Saab AB. The move, which ThyssenKrupp calls “unfair,” cost the German industrial group a billion-dollar submarine contract and hundreds of skilled engineers.

And Sweden’s maneuver established defense contractor Saab as a new rival in the global submarine market. ThyssenKrupp, the world’s top nonnuclear-sub maker, already feels heat from newly active producers in Japan and South Korea, and from old rivals in France and Russia.

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