Thursday, February 16, 2006
M&As made easy!
Sometimes this sort of news really makes you wonder at the levels to which our politicians can stoop to make things worse and in the process make them look extremely foolish!
The facts of the case are simple: Mittal put in a hostile takeover bid for Arcelor. Arcelor refused to cow in. Period.
Where the heck does racism come into the picture? When A business is trying to buy out B business, B can obviously do anything in its power to stop it if it doesn’t like being taken over. How on earth does this violate the principle of national treatment? To go by Kamal Nath, any business that tries to take over another business should have its way provided the cost of the bid is good. I have never seen such a simplistic model of M&As (Mergers & Acquisitions) in operation, now being suggested by our honorable minister. Wow! This will lead to the rewriting of all the textbooks on this subject!
Sometimes this sort of news really makes you wonder at the levels to which our politicians can stoop to make things worse and in the process make them look extremely foolish!
The facts of the case are simple: Mittal put in a hostile takeover bid for Arcelor. Arcelor refused to cow in. Period.
Where the heck does racism come into the picture? When A business is trying to buy out B business, B can obviously do anything in its power to stop it if it doesn’t like being taken over. How on earth does this violate the principle of national treatment? To go by Kamal Nath, any business that tries to take over another business should have its way provided the cost of the bid is good. I have never seen such a simplistic model of M&As (Mergers & Acquisitions) in operation, now being suggested by our honorable minister. Wow! This will lead to the rewriting of all the textbooks on this subject!
And to make things worse, he is mentioning the experience of French cement major Lafarge, which acquired Indian cement plants without any problems of the kind faced by Mittal in the Arcelor bid. How can one compare a particular takeover bid with another one at a 60,000 ft level??!!!! To top it all, he is threatening not to ratify a double-taxation accord with the Grand Duchy, kicking off a serious diplomatic row.
Why doesn’t someone knowledgeable just take him aside and teach some fundas of M&A’s before this really gets out of hand?
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