Monday, March 06, 2006

Mittal Steel v/s Arcelor; Hypocrits shown the mirror

Sucheta Dalal wrote a brilliant article on the hypocrisy surrounding the hostile bid by Lakshmi Mittal to acquire European steel giant, Arcelor. It appeared in today's edition of Indian Express.

Some of questions raised by Sucheta are really worth pondering over. A small excerpt -

This is all very well. But now that we have waved our national flags and supported Lakshmi Mittal, can we apply our minds to whether the government will behave differently if and when a foreign company makes a hostile bid for any of our Indian bluechips?

Here is a list of some of the Nifty companies where promoters hold less than 30 per cent stake -

1). Tata Steel - 26.7 %
2). Tata Tea - 28.6 %
3). Tata Chemicals - 28.6 %
4). Satyam Comp. - 14.1 %
5). Infosys Tech - 19.6 %
6). Dr.Reddy's - 27.4 %
7). M&M - 23.6 %

and the list goes on....

So the question is -- Are we going to let foreign companies make "successful" hostile bids for these blue-chips ?

1 comment:

Prasanth said...

Why not? I do not think we will try to block any such deals citing "cultural" diffrences.