Mitteled Thinking
Monday, February 6, 2006
I didn’t think that I could ever again be surprised at french political perfidy, but the ‘national’ reaction to Mittel’s hostile buyout attempt on Arcelor amazes me.
Here you have a highly successful european citizen of ‘third-world’ (Indian) descent, wanting to buy a franco-luxo-spanish steel consortium. This steel consortium used to be composed of several horridly-run state monopolies (commonly called ‘national champions’) that were cobbled together at great coups de taxpayer’s money (in 2001).
The day before Mittel announced his intentions, Arcelor showed how it felt about takeovers by completing its own hostile one of a Canadian steel group. The usual stupid white men, De Villepin, Breton (who I thought was a business champion) & Co. thought nothing of Arcelor’s hostile takeover of a wimpy Canadian company.
But, before they had any time to savor La Grande Victoire, the tables got turned in the worst possible way. They poof and paff (which French politicians do better than anyone, anywhere), claiming that hostile takeovers are nice things when it’s France doing the taking over, but …(poof, paff). That the attacker is some guy who isn’t a nice white french elephant, but comes from a place where they have real elephants, well, you can just hear the snotty comments going back and forth in Matignon and Elysée.
How perverse can politicians get?
