Европа уходит за рубеж

Среди компаний, уводящих свои активы за границу, абсолютными лидерами оказываются европейские фирмы. К такому выводу пришел инвестиционный банк «Голдман Сакс» (Goldman Sachs), опросив ведущие компании в США, Европе и Азии. Опрос, цель которого — выяснить инвестиционные планы участников, показал, что наименее патриотично ведут себя европейские компании: они больше других склонны инвестировать за пределами Евросоюза, чтобы диверсифици­ровать валютные риски и снижать издержки.

Как утверждается в отчете «Голдман Сакс», подобная инвестиционная политика европейцев объясняет странное противоречие между стагнацией в Еврозоне и хорошими финансовыми результатами многих европейских компаний. По мнению аналитиков банка, объяснение заключается в том, что европейские предприятия все больше инвестируют и производят за пределами Европы. Это позволяет им быть привлекательными для инвесторов, однако мало помогает экономическому росту в европейских странах, особенно в государствах зоны евро.

Эксперт

Exercise 4. Translate the texts into Russian orally.

Goldman's German revolution

Anxious employees at Germany's huge retail drugstore chain Ihr Platz (Your Place) were braced for the worst a year ago. The $840 million company, based in northern Germany, had seen its sales shrink by over 40% in five years and losses mount as a new generation of family managers blundered and successive chief executive officers failed to stem the decline. The 125-year-old retailer was technically insolvent — a condition that would normally doom a German enterprise to liquidation.

But an unlikely rescuer appeared on the scene: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the U.S. investment-banking giant. Ihr Platz's woes had hit the radar screen of Goldman's London-based restructuring group, a 30-strong team formed two years ago to develop a European business investing in distressed debts and turnarounds. Bv January of this year, a Goldman-led consortium had snapped up all of Ihr Platz's $144 million in bank debt and, working with the shareholders' trustees, sent in experts from Alvarez & Marsal, a New York turnaround specialist. When discussions with other creditors bogged down, Goldman bought out the remaining bank debt and in May pushed Ihr Platz into insolvency.

Goldman's maneuver would hardly raise an eyebrow in New York or London. But in Germany it was revolutionary: The American firm pioneering Germany's case of a Chapter 11-style restructuring under a little-used 1999 law — a test case that could well spur many more such workouts and galvanize industrial overhauls in Germany. Unlike Germans, Americans and British use insolvency as a strategic tool to implement a turnaround. They don't see bankruptcy as a stigma but as a viable alternative if out-of-court restructuring fails.

Business Week

Have Fat Cats Had Their Day?

Outside the conference centre in London, where GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) held its annual meeting on May 19th, there were activists protesting at the firm's drug-pricing policies in poor countries. Inside, for most of GSK's shareholders this week, there was only one topic of real importance: the severance arrangements of the firm's gallic, magnificently haughty boss, Jean-Pierre "J-P" Gamier.

Those arrangements, estimated to be worth $35.7m to Mr Gamier should he depart prematurely, have put GSK in a bit of a spot. Under new rules, shareholders in Britain get to vote each year on their firm's executive-pay plans. GSK's shareholders promptly voted against management.

This has left the firm's hapless board trying to balance shareholders' ire against its contractual obligations to Mr Gamier. The chairman. Sir Christopher Hogg, promised a full review of GSK's pay policies even as Mr Gamier was hinting that he and his lawyers might dig in.

It seems certain that the GSK vote will go down in history as a landmark in corporate governance. Some British activists think it may mark the moment when British capitalism decided to stop converging with its American counterpart — Mr Gander's pay package was like that of a typical American boss, not a British one. It might also mark the moment when shareholders in British companies finally realised that they could not rely only on the separation of chairman and chief executive to keep management on its toes, and had to do the job themselves.

The Economist