GoingGlobal 185takeover battles. In France, Banque Nationale de Paris launched a
$38 billion hostile bid to take over its two major French banking
rivals, Socie ́te ́Ge ́ne ́rale and Paribas, after they had recently an-
nounced their own plan to merge with each other. In Italy, Olivetti
launched a $60 billion hostile bid to acquire its major rival, Telecom
Italia, which in turn erected a series of substantial defensive tactics
designed to thwart the overture, including a white-knight alliance
with Germany’s Deutsche-Telecom.
In another cross-border battle, France’s LVMH Moe ̈t Hennessy
Louis Vuitton waged a protracted and intense battle to obtain control
of Gucci, an Italy-based but Netherlands-incorporated company
which also strenuously resisted the unwelcome overture. TOTAL-
FINA made a hostile bid for Elf Aquitaine in mid-1999, shaking up
the French industrial and governmental establishment. These kinds
of deals—in both their offensive and defensive modes—are reminis-
cent of U.S.-style merger activity, which had been unprecedented in
Europe.
Scores of friendly global alliances have reinforced the spread of
market model behavior in Europe and Japan. Led by the merger of
Daimler and Chrysler, the worldwide auto industry consolidated
through cross-border deals once considered too intractable to
achieve. Industry capacity ranges up to approximately 70 million ve-
hicles annually while average annual demand generally peaks at 50
million, and only about 10 of the world’s 40 auto manufacturers are
profitable. Some results: Ford bought control of Mazda, Volkswagen
acquired the United Kingdom’s Rolls Royce, Renault bought Sam-
sung (Korea) and a third of Nissan, and Daimler-Chrysler bought a
third of Mitsubishi.
Many other industries stand on the brin kof similar global consol-
idation. In the publishing industry, Germany’s Bertelsmann pursued
an acquiring and joint-venturing spree with other European and U.S.
counterparts; in apparel, after surviving its own battle to resist a take-
over by LVMH, Gucci too kover France’s Yves Saint Laurent; in fi-
nance, Deutsche Ban kbought Ban kers Trust, UBS bought Paine
Webber, Credit Suisse bought Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette, Dresdner
bought Wasserstein Parella; British Petroleum bought Amoco; and
Nabisco and a U.S. buyout firm sought to buy Britain’s United Bis-
cuits only to be outflanked by a consortium of French, German, and
British buyers. These and scores of other proposals on the docket of
the EU merger panel have created unmatched uniformity of practices
and expectations in the corporate world.