Dear Bernard,
Mannesman bought Orange at some eye poping figure and then comes VOD and bids for Mannesman and the bid is now over $120bn! German Chancellor even weighs in and complains about hostile foreign buying of German companies.
The restructuring of the global telecom industry brought about by global privatisation and new technology has rendered the old mainstay of the industry, the long distance voice business, a low or no margin commodity. Around the world the old telecom companies who were never desigend to be commercial have been thrust into the marketplace and they are dying becuase of the new technology and becuase they could only make money when they were given government monopolies backed up with the local police if anyone worked against them. In some cases they couldn't even make money with the benefit of a government monopoly.
The picture has become clearer in the last few months. There are the super conglomerates, T, WCON, NTT/KDD, BT, DT, FT, CT and there are the fibre carriers, QWST, GBLX, LVLT, Williams, and then there are the wirelss players of whom I can ony think of VOD as a stand alone world player at the moment.
Just about every other company around the world in the business is a target for either the super conglomerates or the fibre carriers.
Best regards,
L |
