Vocabulary

bid n	1) предложение (цены); 2) попытка приобрести компанию; 3) попытка (чего-то добиться)
hostile bid	враждебная попытка поглощения
friendly takeover	дружественное поглощение
takeover bid	попытка поглощения
in a bid to do smth	пытаясь добиться чего-либо
target company Syn. takeover target, prey	компания-объект возможного поглощения
poison pill	защитная мера компании при угрозе поглощения; «отравленная пилюля»
stagger v	осуществлять ротацию; заменять поочередно (членов совета директоров компании)
equity n	собственный капитал
defence n	1) защита; правовое средство защиты; 2) возражения по иску; 3) обстоятельства, освобождающие от ответственности
white knight	дружественная компания, спасающая компанию-жертву от враждебного поглощения; «белый рыцарь»

cross-shareholdings	взаимное участие
unwinding п	совершение обратной сделки; закрытие позиции
bidding war	«война» за обладание компанией- потенциальным объектом поглощения
Vocabulary Commentary При описании методов, используемых компаниями в борьбе против враждебных поглощений, используются также следующие выражения.
corporate raider Syn. predator	корпоративный налетчик
unsolicited bid	непрошенная попытка погло­щения
greenmail(ing) Syn. good-bye kiss, bon voyage bonus	1) «зеленый шантаж»; приобретение значительного количества акций какой-либо компании с целью вынудить ее выкупить свои акции по более высокой цене; 2) «прощальный бонус»; выкуп компанией своих акций с премией у фирмы, угрожающей ей поглощением; уплата отступного враждебному претенденту; 3) деньги, уплаченные для выкупа акций у лица, пытающегося завладеть компанией
grey knight	«серый рыцарь»; компания -конкурент «белого рыцаря», еще один претендент на дружественное поглощение

Exercise 1. Translate the following into Russian.

a boom in mergers and acquisitions; to pass management-friendly anti-takeover laws; to charge in a bidding war as a white knight; mergers; to employ a poison pill; a soaring target company's price; to be threatened by a hostile bid; to hinder attempts to takeover companies; to spurn an attractive offer; to break up a company; to unwind cross-shareholdings; a staggered board of directors

Exercise 2. Translate the following into English.

помочь компании выйти из затруднения; средства защиты при попытке враждебного поглощения; стать объектом поглощения; вызвать рост цены на акции; закон о компаниях; взаимное участие в капитале компаний; сделать предложение о враждебном поглощении компании; корпоративные «налетчики»; существенно изменить состав совета директоров

• Text 2

Hold My Hand

Takeovers are certainly changing the corporate landscape. But alliances may be altering it even more

BUY, buy, buy. All around companies seem to be snapping each other up. AT&T wants to buy MediaOne; Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia plan to coalesce; Hoechst and Rhone-Poulenc have agreed, after much dithering, to be spliced. Some of the current crop of marriage proposals may stop short of the altar; others, such as the mooted deal between Texaco and Chevron, two oil firms, may come to grief. But feverish though the current merger activity is a more important change may be in the scale and complexity of alliances.

In Silicon Valley and Hollywood, alliances are old hat: in a sense, almost every movie is in ad-hoc alliance, as is the development of every new computer chip. But, as in so much else, these two fashionable places are proving models for older industries.

Mergers, like marriages, can be legally defined and therefore readily counted. Alliances are more like love affairs: they take many forms, may be transient or lasting, and live beyond the easy reach of statisticians.

However, the numbers represent just one part of the picture. Relying on outsiders for more than a fifth of your sales represents a fairly big dent in many companies' definition of what they are: it erodes corporate boundaries and forces imperious types to co­operate with one another. Thus AT&Ts takeover of MediaOne may in the long term prove less remarkable and complicated than the alliance it has simultaneously formed with Microsoft to deliver broadband services over cable-television networks.

The degree to which alliances transform companies varies with the type of alliance. The most common reason, still, is to find a way into a foreign market. Indeed, the need to expand abroad helps to explain why alliances have long been more common in Europe and Asia, which between them account for half the world's total, than in the United States, which now accounts for around a third. Outside the United States, nearly all alliances are cross-border ones.

Worse, this need to find an ally is often driven by governments rather than by commercial logic. The number of alliances soared partly because there are usually national barriers to foreign ownership.

The huge Star Alliance, which includes Lufthansa and United Airlines, began as a series of loose arrangements to share codes and direct passengers to partners' flights; now it is beginning to look more like a quasi-merger, with shared executive lounges and pooled maintenance facilities.

Such arrangements look less efficient than full-blown mergers: were it one company, the Star Alliance could save a lot in managerial overheads.

The same applies to many telecoms alliances. Pat Gallagher, managing director for Europe of Britain's ВТ says that the telecoms giant formed lots of joint ventures in the early 1990s with foreign firms "because we couldn't do an acquisition." But this was often a policy of second-best. "Is it easier to run a 100 % owned company?" he asks rhetorically. "Of course it is." However, even when they cross borders, many alliances are not merely frustrated mergers, but deliberate attempts to change direction.

In industries where local knowledge is particularly important, such as retailing, cross-border partnerships still seem essential. Having watched several of its peers make expensive mistakes trying to buy stores or going it alone, Britain's Tesco has begun its push into South Korea arm-in-arm with Samsung. Wal-Mart is a past master at learning from local partners. It started working with Cifra in Mexico as long ago as 1991 before taking control of the local retailer two years ago.

This implies that alliances may be mere stepping-stones. In fact, once one looks beyond the cross-border deals, a different picture begins to emerge — much closer to the endlessly forming and re-forming webs of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. An increasing number of alliances are not about geographic areas but managerial ones — and particularly about defining where firms begin and end. Typically a firm will focus on one or two core competences, and outsource other things to its allies. Sometimes this merely means sharing resources on a big project.

Alliances seem even more useful when companies are not potential rivals at all, but firms that are at different points on the same value chain. If a company wants access to another firm's knowledge in a particular area, argues Marcus Alexander, a director of Britain's Ashridge Strategic Management Centre, an acquisition can be a disaster. Buying your customer also means running the risk of losing other customers.

Indeed, for all the talk about "long-term strategic partners," two things seem to be pushing big companies towards an ever more promiscuous lifestyle, with multiple partners. The first is that many of the people whose brainpower the big firms most need simply do not want to work for them. The second reason is the speed of change. Alliances give you the chance to move on if something better comes along.

On paper, all this knowledge-sharing sounds wonderfully creative. In practice, it can be hell. Buy another company, and rationalisation is simply a matter of aiming the hatchet in the right place. Running an alliance, says Firoz Rasul of Ballard Power Systems, a Canadian pioneer of fuel cells, is "like getting married. You have to understand each other's expectations. And even then, you have to work very hard to keep the initial excitement going."

When the partners are corporate titans, such as Bill Gates of Microsoft or Michael Armstrong of AT&T, there is obviously plenty of room for disagreement. But things are not much easier when partners are small. Ballard has alliances with two giants of the car industry, Ford and DaimlerChrysler. "We're like a mouse sleeping with two elephants," says Mr Rasul. In Silicon Valley plenty of people argue that if you get into bed with a company like Microsoft or Intel, you will get squashed.

In this context, trust seems to matter much more than bits of paper. Peter Boot, an alliance expert, argues that trust must be present at every level. "You have to be disposed towards the most benign interpretation of the strange signals you get from time to time," he says. "You have to interpret them innocently."

More than anything this requires leg-work by the managers concerned. If nothing else, the new fashion for alliances should prove a boon to restaurants all over the world.

The Economist

Notes

1. But feverish though the current merger activity is, a more important change may be in the scale and complexity of alliances. - В данном предложении имеет место инверсия, используемая для усиления значения слова feverish. Без инверсии предложение выглядело бы следующим образом:

But though the current merger activity is feverish, a more important change may be in the scale and complexity of alliances.

2. ad hoc — (лат) на данный случай; ad hoc committee — специальный комитет; ad hoc(c)ery, ad hockery — решения, постановления, принятые на данный случай; договоренности, достигнутые на данный случай

3. broadband — широкополосный (в кабельной оптике)

Useful Words and Phrases

to come to grief	1) попасть в беду, в затруднительное положение; 2) потерпеть неудачу, плохо кончить
short of smth	не доходя до чего-либо
to fall short of	1) потерпеть неудачу; 2) не хватать; 3) не достигать (цели)
his income falls short of his expenditure by £500	его доходы на 500 фунтов ст. меньше, чем его расходы
to fall short of accepted standards	не соответствовать стандартам
old hat	нечто давно известное
(a) past master	непревзойдённый мастер, знаток, специалист
to be a past master in smth	быть непревзойденным мастером в какой-либо области
benign interpretation	толкование, благоприятное для данной стороны

Exercise 1.

Articles about company relationship often use the language of courtship, marriage and divorce. Read the above article and find examples of such language of personal relationship describing alliances and mergers.

Watch the video The Merger is off.

Exercise 2. Read the following text.

Types of Mergers

Economists classifies mergers into four groups. (1) horizontal, (2) vertical, (3) congeneric, and (4) conglomerate.

A horizontal merger occurs when one firm combines with another in the same line of business - for example, when one widget manufacturer acquires another, or one retail food chain mergers with a second.

An example of a vertical merger is a steel producer's acquisition of one of its own suppliers, such as an iron or coal mining firm, or an oil producer's acquisition of a company which uses its products, such as a petrochemical firm.

'Congeneric' means "allied in nature or action"; hence, a congeneric merger involves related enterprises but not producers of the same product or firms in a producer-supplier relationship.

A conglomerate merger occurs when unrelated enerprises combine.

Operating economies (and also anticompetitive effects) are at least partially dependent on the type of merger involved. Vertical and horizontal mergers generally provide the greatest synergistic operating benefits, but they are also the ones most likely to be attacked by the government

Explain the word combinations in English and translate them into Russian.

backward vertical
forward vertical
full-blown	merger
frustrated

Give your own examples of the biggest mergers and analyse them using the above terminology.

Exercise 3. Translate the following into English.

давать предвзятое толкование; оказаться благом для страхового бизнеса; быть готовым проявлять терпение при выработке решения; сверхкрупные корпорации; получить доступ к информации о клиентах; обмен информацией; объединять ресурсы при работе над крупным проектом; стирать границы между корпорациями; ТНК в полном смысле этого слова; добиться экономии накладных расходов; попытка приобрести компанию

Exercise 4. Translate the following extracts paying attention to the attribute structures.

1. But while Mr. Kilts relied on extensive research to identify unsatisfied consumer needs, Gilette traditionally adhered to an "if we build it, they will come" strategy. Consumers might not know they needed better shave, the theory went, but once they had tried a superior Gilette system they would "trade up" and pay premium for the invention.

2. Klein, the author of the book about AOL and Time Warner ill-fated merger, is effective in depicting the culture clash between the arrogant AOLers and staid Time Warnerites that ultimately rocked the merger. Ideas that AOL saw as forging synergies were repeatedly shot down by the Time Warner side, which seemed intent on demonstrating that it had its own way of doing things. The oil-and-water mismatch between the companies played out in the corner suites, too. Klein has little inside dope on what took place - perhaps because his sources were mainly middle managers - but he does recount the dramatic and rapid unraveling of the company's top management. Recriminations were common as AOLTimeWamer's outlook deteriorated in the soft economy.

3. The narrative picks up speed about halfway through, when the author begins exploring the business practices of AOL chief deal-maker David Colburn, who was ousted last summer during the accounting scandal. Colbum, who Klein says affected a grizzled, rumpled "I-don't-care-what-the-hell-you-think manner of dress," came to be feared in the dotcom world as a take-no-prisoners negotiator. He extracted onerous terms from fledgling Web startups, who felt they had to advertise on AOL if they were to have any credibility on Wall Street.

Exercise 5. Translate the text into Russian orally.