[ad_1]
The controversy did not wait for the official announcement of the Brussels decision. The European Commission should veto the marriage between Alstom and Siemens mobility. The project of building a European railroad champion would then fall apart. "A political mistake", according to the minister of theÉBruno Le Maire, very committed to his German counterpart in favor of the merger. The boss of Alstom Henri Poupart-Lafarge sees "ideological prejudices"from the Commission"partisan of the openness to all hair, while refusing to see that other actors in the world do not play the same game"in an interview with Le Figaro.
The Directorate General of Competition argues that it is only applying its rules. Despite concessions made by the Alstom-Siemens group, in order to sell some of its business, Margrethe Vestager's services believe that the merger would place the new group in a position of too strong a dominance of competition. While Alstom and Siemens point out the need to compete with the Chinese CRRC juggernaut, four times bigger than Alstom alone, the argument did not convince Commission experts. For them, if the Chinese group won contracts at Éin the United States, it is not yet established in Europe.
"As part of its badysis, the European Commission usually projects itself within two years and looks in particular if a new player has the capacity to enter the market in this period of time ", says lawyer Corinne Khayat, a partner at UGGC, recalling the clbadic framework of badysis of merger operations in Brussels.To refine its judgment, the commission services have interviewed operators but also competitors and As a result, they believe that the barriers to entry into the European market are sufficient to prevent the arrival of the Chinese competitor in the short term.
31 BLOCKED MERGERS SINCE 1990
Should we change the competition policy to support the creation of European champions, while the Chinese competition is rebuffing the cards, in rail as in other sectors, and has a financial strength supported by theÉalmost unlimited Chinese state? And badyze in the longer term the state of international competition?
In France, the question has been regularly raised since the ban on the Schneider-Legrand merger in 2001.
For Corinne Khayat, "The Commission is very rarely opposed to business combinations. Thus, in fact, few mergers are prohibited although some are the subject of commitments from acquirers ".
In 2017, out of the 400 transactions notified in Europe, only two – the merger of the Deutsche Börse and London Stock Exchanges and the takeover of the Croatian cement manufacturer Cemex by the German groups Schwenk and Heidelberg – were banned. Since 1990, it has vetoed only 31 times. A figure to which are added the 44 cases in which the companies preferred to give up their plans of marriage after having received the first grievances of Brussels. But at the same time, 6400 mergers were allowed without a hitch, including the weddings Lafarge-Holcim and Essilor-Luxxotica.
"We are happy to have a strong commission to face the Gafa"
"The Commission works with a narrow competition mandate. We are happy to have a strong commission to face the Gafa. The debate on industrial policy has other aspects than the revision of competition policy "reminds the former MEP Sylvie Goulard, who spoke on February 5 at the country risk conference of credit insurer Coface.
This does not necessarily prevent adjustments. "It has been said a lot that the weight of consumers is excessive, in detail it is not always true", recognizes Jean-Dominique Senard, Renault's president at the same conference, but it is probably necessary to amend the doctrine ", he believes. The debate is not about to fall again.
Source link
