.High Road Takes a Hit An internal United Nations study uncovers that corporations reporting on their environmental impact and labor practices remains a “niche practice†with a “very limited†role in promoting sustainable development. It predicts that by 2020 only 11 percent of transnationals will provide social and environmental data. .Wave of Mergers and Acquisitions Hostile M&A bids pushed volumes above the $2,680 billion record set in the first nine months of 2000. Deals are getting bigger too, with 34 reaching $10 billion or more and accounting for 29 percent of the total. Goldman Sachs is the leading banking advisor overseeing $1,094.57 billion in 416 deals (hostile and friendly). In second place is Citigroup at $910.40 billion with 391 deals, followed by JPMorgan at $889.43 billion and 423 deals. Private equity groups are also starting to have a big impact lead by Blackstone, Carlyle and Cerberus. Europe’s biggest merger came in Italy where the banking industry is starting to consolidate. Banca Intesa (whose largest shareholder is the French bank Agricole with an 18 percent share) bought Sanpaolo IMI for $37.7 billion. In the pharmacy industry the big boys are starting to scoop-up midsize firms. Merck of Germany acquired Serono of Switzerland for 10.5 billion Euros, the Danish group Nycomed purchased German rival Altana for 4.5 billion Euros, UCB of Beligum paid 4.4 billion Euros for Germany’s Schwarz Pharma, and Barr from the US took over the Croatian firm Pliva for $2.5 billion. Not to be left out India’s Ranbaxy, a firm that specializes in producing generic drugs when patents run out, took over businesses in Romania, Spain and Italy. Chief Executive Malvinder Mohan Singh says “We are aggressive and hungry for growth and the Indian market won’t fulfill our aspirations.†About 80% of Ranbaxy’s sales are outside India and the company just filed 169 applications for generic drug approvals for the US market. In steel the big news was Mittal’s acquisition of Arcelor creating the world’s largest steel enterprise with three times the capacity of its closes rival. Mittal is headquarter in the Netherlands and was the world’s largest steel business, owned by India’s Mittal family, who live in London. Arcelor, a cross-border merger of European firms, was the world’s second largest. The next expected merger is India’s Tata’s bid for the Anglo-Dutch enterprise Corus. China still produces more than a third of global steel output, and other major players are the Russian steel industry, Nippon Steel and JFE of Japan, Posco in S. Korea, ThyseenKrupp from Germany and US Steel and Nucor of the US. .Transnationals Favor Europe Figures for 2005 show that Europe attracted 39 percent of the world’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Asia-Pacific was the destination for 31 percent and North America just 18 percent. Gaining access to markets and being close to suppliers often loom larger than the quest for cheap labor. Still China attracts one in every eight FDI dollars and India saw the greatest job creation as a result of FDI with 180,000.This is the first of Jerry Harris' new "Global Notes" column, providing readers with a review of recent globalization-related news and analysis. The column will appear exclusively on SolidarityEconomy.net [eds.]
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