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> Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. Competing in category chemicals: BASF, Akzo Nobel, Lanxess, Air Liquid
by Y-bar 1y ago
> Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers.
Competing in category chemicals:
BASF, Akzo Nobel, Lanxess, Air Liquide, and a bunch others
Competing in category engineering:
Siemens, Bosch, ABB, Alstom, ThyssenKrupp, Airbus and a bunch others
Competing in category metals:
Aurubis, Umicore, Norsk Hydro, Gruppo Riva, ThyssenKrupp, and a bunch others
Competing in category pharma:
Novartis, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Bayer, and others
Competing in category electronics:
Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Electrolux, Schneider Electric, and lots of others
> any scaling company is instantly hamstrung
You are assuming scaling this way is a long-term positive for consumers, investors, employees, and/or markets. I can find no such evidence.
- Aunche 1y agoAll the companies that I've heard of that you listed were all founded before the EU.
- Tainnor 1y agoThese are all huge companies in my view. In addition to them there are also countless small to medium sized companies that nobody's ever heard of, that don't experience hypergrowth but have slow and steady growth - especially in the B2B sector. I've worked at some such companies.
- abirch 1y agoSiemens has 330,000 employees. I'd always consider that huge.
- musicale 1y agoOnly twice the size of mega-corps like Apple.
- b112 1y agoAll of this seems reasonable, and I see the value in keeping things competitive. I do have one concern though. Established markets are more entrenched, and hearing that smaller companies may have "slow and steady growth" here seems excellent. Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them. Being held back in such a market can be troublesome. So this is what I'd worry about.
- mattashii 1y ago> Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them. Well, only if you make it a goal to occupy all the trenches. The EU has realized that it does not want all possible trenches occupied. For example: There is a lot of market share to be had in waste disposal by dumping it in the rivers and oceans. Regulation generally prohibits this, because we don't want our rivers and oceans full of waste. Capitalist market self-regulation wouldn't have done this without external pressure (regulation, litigation, etc.) because the capitalist market would externalize all costs if it would increase profits.
- pastage 1y agoBad example. Dumping waste cheaply illegally is a trench that is continuously filled with really bad stuff. Regulations needs more Oumph, it is just too cheap to do in an dishonest way.
- Y-bar 1y agoI agree actually, my use of "medium-sized" was not best, in my personal view a medium-sized company is in the 200-500 employee range. These are definitively larger than that, however I assumed the person I replied to took "medium sized" to mean "significantly smaller than Apple/Google/Amazon/… …but not unknown". Because if I were to pull up a list of thirty unknown actually medium-sized companies pretty much nobody would recognise the names.
- Tainnor 1y agoThese companies may be smaller than FAANG, but I also feel that if BASF disappeared overnight it would have a larger impact on the world than if Facebook disappeared. HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jjaksic 1y agoDefine "impact on the world". Facebook has massive impact (arguably net-negative). I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies, though I'm sure they produce some very important things. Did you mean positive impact? Physical impact?
- tsimionescu 1y agoAre you working in a business that buys chemical products for manufacturing? If not, why would you interact with BASF? This is exactly what the GP was saying: you're looking at B2C companies as if they matter more, when in reality the vast majority of commerce (but not profits) is B2B.
- FireBeyond 1y agoHmmm, let's see - a lot of the chemicals for polyurethane foams. Ammonia, acetylene, formic acid, butanediol. Engineering plastics used in automotive and electronics applications. Styrenes for same. Automotive OEM and refinish coatings - one of the bigger suppliers. Industrial coatings and paints. Some of the bigger fungicides, herbicides, insecticides. Catalytic converter components, battery components, cathodes, etc.
- johndhi 1y agoWhere are the software companies that compete with apple though? Wasn't that the question?
- saagarjha 1y agoThat's why the DMA exists.
- pieds 1y agoNo it wasn't. The question was that if regulation creates more competition with Apple what are the markets with this competition? European companies compete with US companies, including Apple, in areas where there is competition. In music software, music streaming, engineering and finance software, services and so on. Apple has around 33% smartphone market share in Europe. Where is the US competition? Google at 3%. The actual competition is non-US in Samsung and Xiaomi. You can argue that Google competes with the Play Store, but then there is no competition with the Play Store on Android from the US. Big US tech companies don't compete with each other as much as one might think. Most of their revenue comes from dominating one area or platform, with little competition from the rest. So therefor the common conclusion that Europe should be more like the US to have competition also doesn't make sense as the big US tech companies don't have serious direct competition in the US in their core businesses. You can't compete with the big tech companies by creating a Google with 3% market share in smartphones to compete with Apple, a Walmart with 6% online retail market share to compete with Amazon, or a Microsoft with 4% search engine market share to compete with Google.
- creer 1y ago> Competing in category [...] Also, this is not true. These are categories huge enough to be meaningless. They are stock market classifications (at best) which do not reflect market competition.
- nsteel 1y agoSmall nitpick but FYI Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia merged. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise still exists but is just the bit nobody wanted.
- carlosjobim 1y agoSignificant about your list is that most of them are businesses who sell to other businesses, not to consumers. That's what is propping up the European economy, since European companies don't seem to be able to make an export that foreign customers are interested in. With some exceptions of course, mostly food and luxury goods. Nokia could have been a forerunner for lots of other European companies taking on the world, but sadly it fizzled out.