Eau de Cologne vs Perfume

The firm said any hostile takeover by the soft-spoken Mittal would also hurt its employees, the country and the memory of Louis XIV Okay, I made that last one up but I8217;m sure you haven8217;t forgotten that Mittal8217;s daughter was married in his palace in 2004.

Unhappy French Finance Minister Thierry Breton went a step further. He said he wasn8217;t sure whether corporate governance systems and cultures of the world8217;s two biggest steel companies were even compatible Translation: The French will certainly not say namaste or allow samosas in their canteen. Another ridiculous thing he said was that the bid lacked vision8212;now a Rajasthan-born tycoon who started out in a village without electricity, yet managed to reach a point where he could pick the 17th century Palace of Versailles as a wedding venue for his daughter and who believes he can create the world8217;s first 100 million-tonne plus steel producer may lack subtlety and taste, but he8217;s certainly not low on vision.

In fact, the same Breton who8217;s protesting about Mittal8217;s future plans for Arcelor was once a die-hard believer in aggressive cost cutting. That8217;s exactly how he rescued the French government-run Thomson Multimedia in the 1990s. Before he took over the company in 1997, the French even considered selling the ailing electronics firm to South Korea8217;s Daewoo for one franc.

Back in those days, Breton swore by concepts like reinvention. But now the dynamic, curly-haired man 8212; who moved from CEO of French Telecom to finance minister 8212; has a completely different opinion. He recently expressed 8216;8216;profound concern8217;8217; that the hostile bid was launched without any preliminary discussion between the two parties. Not that Arcelor hasn8217;t been aware of Mittal8217;s intentions 8212; Dolle himself claimed his company had been preparing to do battle with the Indian-born tycoon for almost a year. So on and so forth and more such racist hogwash.

Sunil Prasad, the secretary-general of the Brussels-based Europe India Chamber of Commerce EICC, explained it slightly more diplomatically. 8216;8216;The hostile reaction of French and other European Union politicians against Mittal8217;s bid shows the economic immaturity of Europeans in the age of merger and acquisition as a part of the globalisation process,8221; he told a news agency.

But he8217;s being too polite.

Look at us. Are we making a fuss because multinationals, including Swiss biggie Holcim and French giant Lafarge, now control nearly a quarter of India8217;s cement production? I haven8217;t heard anyone around me complain about the smell of French cement.

This is the age of the global bidder and, whether the French like it or not, the New Tycoon doesn8217;t necessarily eat croissants for breakfast.

Indian companies are increasingly looking at global opportunities. We still have only one Mittal 8212; after all, he8217;s the world8217;s third richest man after Bill Gates and Warren Buffet my personal favourite 8212; but, on a smaller scale, there8217;s been a lot of recent action.

Indian companies have increasingly realised the cost benefits of going global8212;Videocon bought Thomson SA8217;s colour picture tube business in China, Poland and Mexico, Matrix Labs picked up Belgium8217;s DocPharma, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited acquired Teleglobe International Holdings in fact, the Tata group was on a roll in 2005 with overseas deals totalling more than 650 million, Reliance Infocomm bought Flag Telecom, ONGC bought Texas-based Exxon Mobil8217;s 30 per cent share in some Brazilian oil fields8230; the list is longer than in any previous year.

Perhaps the French Flinch stems from that favourite European paranoia8212;outsourcing. The fear that Indians are answering all the phone calls of the developed world. After all, as Arcelor declared, even Japan was a better partner than India.

Of course, we8217;re as exclusionist as anyone. We go on tours that promise dal-chawal in Bulgaria, insist on carrying pickle in leaky bottles that immigration officers can smell a mile away and love building white marble temples in every global neighbourhood we inhabit. We have our own XL mix of racial and colonial hang-ups. No wonder the French are worried that the Mittals of India could change the way they live and work.

But that8217;s not the point. The French or the Indians can no longer get away with their stereotypical impressions of the way they think businesses should be run and their narrow images of who should be boss. These days, you never know which country the next CEO is coming from. And in a time like this, why on earth should a Lakshmi Mittal 8212; whose European hub is spread across at least a dozen countries 8212; have to prove that his steel smells as fragrant as the stuff they make in France?