OK, This is what happened. Some of you may recall that Interarms use to be the importer of Walther products. When the owner of Interarms passed on, Walther got out from Interarms. Interarms did lousy job of promoting and distributing Walther products. Umarex bought Walther back in 1998. Umarex has also been supplying S&W with air guns for years. Umarex has been a big air gun maker for a long time. Anyway, the VP of S&W was at Umarex talking shop when they showed him the P99. He didn't think much of it at the time, but after it hit the market in the U.S. he went back to Germany to strike a deal with them to replace the failing Sigma line. Thus the SW99 was born. The SW99 has a Walther frame with S&W made slide and barrel. This cooperation started the ball rolling towards a distributer partnership. Walther wanted to set up their own shop, but S&W was already here and had all the facilities to handle importing the Walther line. Now I've been told that S&W does own a part of WaltherUSA. But just a part, I believe around 30%. Thus Germany has full control over what happens. When S&W signed the deal, Walther came out and said they have no intension of signing the contract. I'm sure it created some tension between the two companies. I know at the Shot Show, Walther was showing that it had nothing to do with S&W and their decisions. That WaltherUSA was its own company. I know Kimber was doing this also. S&W make the blanks for Kimber slides and maybe frames.
So there you have it. Walther is too good of a company to get mixed up in what S&W did. I will admit that I am bias. I have a nice Walther collection of several of their models and love them all.
Devin