ASIAN COMPANIES SHOULD NOT RUSH TO GO GLOBAL
The
prospect of a tidal wave of global acquisitions by Asian companies can easily lead to hallucinations. For the deal-hungry bankers adept at talking it up, it is the stuff of dreams. For western politicians it can induce nightmares, as CNOOC, the Chinese oil company, discovered to its cost when the US Congress rose up to block its bid for Unocal last year.
The recent travails of TCL, China's large consumer electronics company, ought to bring some badly-needed perspective to this feverish fantasising. TCL was an early adopter of Beijing's injunction to industry to “go global”, snapping up units of France's Alcatel and Thomson. Less than three years
