4 ms·
Seeing how American investors sucked the last drop of blood out of several German companies over the last decade or two by "restructuring" those companies, effe
by iforgotpassword 9y ago
Seeing how American investors sucked the last drop of blood out of several German companies over the last decade or two by "restructuring" those companies, effectively signing ridiculously expensive consulting contracts with themselves, I can't feel too bad about this. Capitalism gets glorified and justified unless someone else starts beating you at your own game.
- krona 9y agoPresumably, these restructurings were fraudulent under German/EU law? Otherwise I don't see how your comparison works.
- coldtea 9y agoPerhaps his point is that law and morality are not the same thing.
- iforgotpassword 9y agoYes some apparently were. Märklin sued and won iirc. But even if it were totally legal, restructuring a company with the goal of pumping all the money out of it and then just watching it crash and burn just doesn't sound like it should be. Not any more legal than whats described in this article, in my humble understanding of right and wrong.
- amelius 9y agoIf A hurts B, then C hurts D, then that is somehow ok if B,C and A,D are in the same country?
- m3kw9 9y agoHe is saying if A hurts B, A thinks is ok until C hurts A in a way that beats it to its own game. A and C is acronyms for countries
- jnordt 9y agoWould you mind giving some examples? The worst cases that I remember were usually private equity / leveraged buy outs, that usually leads to a transfer of the production to EastAsia. That practice is not exclusive to Amercan companies though. It will be interesting to see how the new Chinese investments will fear (Kuka) and if the German goverment will adopt a stronger stance on this take overs in the future.
- iforgotpassword 9y agoThere was a great documentary about it on a German TV channel (Arte) years ago. One name that got stuck is Märklin, since I know people who worked there. It wasn't the worst case though and the company still lives independently, after some rough times. Not trying to say that either practice is good, but there tends to be a bias in perception, naturally. We're always the good guys and China is the evil 60s SciFi villain who's mostly just evil because he's evil, kind of.