A regional Chinese state fund will take a stake in Volvo cars, the Swedish carmaker Ford of the U.S. recently sold to China's Geely, financial Daily Dagens Industri said on Thursday, quoting a Geely spokesman.

The Chinese fund is based in the oil-rich city of Daqing, in China's northeast, the daily reported.

"The regional state fund is Geely's external financial partner," Anders Fogel, Geely's spokesman in Sweden, told the newspaper.

"We can't immediately say what percentages the partners will have in Volvo cars," he added.

According to Dagens Industri, quoting sources close to the deal, the purchase will be finalised in August.

Sweden's TV4 television said Daqing would take a 40 percent stake in the carmaker.

Volvo cars has been a separate company from Sweden's Volvo Group, which makes trucks, buses and boat and aircraft equipment, since its 1999 sale to U.S. car giant Ford.

On March 28, Ford announced it had agreed to sell Volvo to Geely for 1.8 billion dollars, almost four times less than what it had paid for the brand 11 years earlier.

Geely has said it had plans to expand Volvo's presence in China, now the world's largest car market.