This is both wonderful news for B&R and, if anything, bad news for Schneider-Electric. It was a mutual agreement and the only reason it isn't called a merger is because B&R was a private company and so solely owned by the titular Bernecker and Rainer, though they may have given partial ownership to executives like Wimmer.
There is a 0% chance that ABB would close the state-of-the-art facility and sole location of production of B&R equipment in Eggelsberg. People in satellite offices around the world may be merged with ABB offices nearby, but their expertise in B&R isn't going to devalue.
I would expect B&R products under the ABB name to start breaking into the market in a big way in the next few years. They really are technically superior to the establishement like AB and Siemens and they aren't Windows based like Beckhoff. They can also dump the Schneider Altivar VFD lines in favor of ABB VFDs that fit their model better.
As a B&R guy, I'm super excited!
