june 27th, 2006
the entertainment never stops.
now the russians claim they are being insulted by guy dolle and co.
aditya birla (good for him) hints that the darn europeans had better behave. i dont think the mittals have forgotten or forgiven guy dolle's assertions about 'monkey money'.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/26/business/steel.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/business/worldbusiness/27fear.html?_r=1&dlbk&oref=slogin
the good news: this is the first giant takeover by someone with indian origins. it is seen, correctly, as a metaphor for the white atlanticists' decline. maybe this will embolden other indian MNCs to go out and make audacious takeovers.
4 comments:
Rajiv,
I think that one difference would be that the Japanese were insulated in their culture whereas Mittal has been living in the West for decades - so I doubt that your theory is correct - at least I hope so.
Can someone please provide the link , where Aditya Birla has asked the Europeans to behave? Thank you.
typo on my part. aditya mittal i should have said, not aditya birla.
anyway, interestingly, the papers are now pointing to this episode as an instance of big shareholders (eg pension funds) asserting themselves at the cost of the interests of top managers. may the tribe of active shareholders increase! this is particularly true in india where the poor shareholders are taken to the cleaners by insiders.
the other thing that has not been widely publicized is that the mittal family used to have almost total control of mittal steel because of the voting rights for their stock. in arcelor mittal they will have far less control. how this is going to affect the performance of the company and its ability to move quickly we shall have to wait and see.
net net:
1. a win for globalization and a loss for racist, xenophobic atlanticists
2. dont know if the combined company is going to be all that great. ln mittal himself may have got so caught up in the pursuit that he took his eye off the long-term. after all the fuss, this company only accounts for 10% of world steel output, and who knows if the commodity boom will continue unabated.
Thanks for the clarification.
I think there can be significant friction between the english speaking mittal executives and french speaking arcelor execs.
Laying off costly workers(if need be) in european manfacturing sites is going to be a headache for Mittal.
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