Barriers to entry

“WILL greed triumph?” wondered Germany's mass-market Bild Zeitung. “Takeover? Was ist das?” retorted Britain's Daily Telegraph. The hostile takeover bid by Britain's Vodafone AirTouch, a mobile-telephone company, for its partner, Mannesmann, has highlighted the gulf between German and British takeover practice, and, more generally, between British and continental capitalism. For years, the European Commission has been trying to impose some British discipline on the rest of Europe through an agreement on a takeover directive, which would set an EU-wide code for corporate mergers and acquisitions. Hopes of a breakthrough at this month's Helsinki summit were dashed. Spain refused to withdraw its objection to the directive because of its disagreement with Britain about the status of Gibraltar. The upshot: harmonisation of Europe's takeover practices seems to be as far away as ever.