Neighbours

A FEW kilometres, and a couple of decades, separate the headquarters of two of Germany's best engineering companies, SGL Carbon and Linde. The former, which makes high-tech graphite products for such things as rocket motors and nuclear reactors, is New Germany: leanly housed in a modest riverside villa in Wiesbaden, the company likes to be seen as an evangelist for modern ideas, such as transparent accounts, shareholder value and share-options. Linde, on the other hand, is Old Germany: a conglomerate that makes machine tools, gases, fork-lift trucks and refrigeration equipment. Shy and unwelcoming in its relations with the outside world, Linde risks being underrated: SGL Carbon precisely the reverse.