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To: Clarksterh who wrote (26948)	4/14/1999 8:28:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 152472

Majority ownership is not necessarily the best policy, even for U.S. companies bent on acquiring other U.S. companies. When you buy majority control, you also agree to take prime responsibility for running the company. This might be a good strategy if the company you are buying has been doing a rather poor job of managing. But when you are looking at foreign companies, you have not only management but cultural considerations. Minority participation by U.S. companies can work perfectly well, and perhaps even better than majority ownership, with one big proviso: The rules of the game, in terms of repatriation of profits, access to markets, etc., must be the same for everybody. The big danger is that a government will skew the regulations in favor of friends and relatives and not deal even handedly with each firm that wants to do business there. Having worked in SE Asia for a number of years, I'd say that the best thing that U.S. companies can do is to gain better understanding of foreign cultures and conduct themselves in a manner to gain the CONFIDENCE and TRUST of the people they are dealing with. No business cooperation works unless it works for all the involved parties.