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/ 6 February 2006
Arcelor, the European steelmaker, recently launched its defence against Mittal Steel’s hostile â,¬18,6-billion takeover bid with a savage attack on its predator’s track record. It claims Mittal had destroyed shareholder value and jobs and has a shoddy record on corporate governance and safety.
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/ 18 November 2005
The corruption scandal at Volkswagen this year robbed Europe’s largest car-maker of at least â,¬5-million (about R40-million) in illegal kickbacks and theft, an independent report by auditors KPMG disclosed recently. The report brought closer criminal charges against Peter Hartz, the former personnel director and close adviser to Germany’s outgoing German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.
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/ 28 October 2005
Ukranian TV viewers watched agog as representatives of the world’s two biggest steel groups, Mittal and Arcelor, drove up the price for their country’s largest metals producer, Kryvorizhstal, in a frenzied auction carried out before the cameras. The auction saw Mittal Steel, the world’s biggest steel producer secure control of the Ukrainian steel mill with a killer bid of £2,7-billion.
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/ 24 October 2005
On Tuesday, European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson saw off French manoeuvres aimed at tying his hands in critical talks to liberalise world trade, winning strong backing from most European governments for his negotiating tactics. The French government summoned a meeting to discuss complaints that the former Mandelsonhad exceeded his mandate in tabling concessions on farm subsidies.
Car manufacturers BMW, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen; the country’s fourth-largest financial institution, Commerzbank; Europe’s largest chip-producer, Infineon — five of Germany’s leading firms, all members of its Dax-30 blue-chip index, have become embroiled in corruption scandals in recent months.
Plans to slash European Union sugar prices will drive hundreds of thousands of farmers in the developing world into poverty and make a mockery of Europe’s commitment to millennium development goals, ministers and NGOs warned recently. On Wednesday the European Commission announced proposals to cut the support price for white sugar by 39%.
United Kingdom Finance Minister Gordon Brown’s stewardship of the British economy last week won glowing tributes from the European Commission. The commission’s upbeat assessment came in a week when Prime Minister Tony Blair called a May 5 general election that will be dominated by Conservative opposition charges that the government’s spending policies are out of control.
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/ 18 February 2005
Peter Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner, this week launched a fresh onslaught on protectionist forces in Europe and the rest of the world and demanded the dismantling of virtually all barriers to trade in goods and services.
Mandelson argued in Stockholm that opening up European and global markets as a whole is the key to promoting growth and jobs at home — and fighting poverty in the Third World.
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/ 29 October 2004
European Union leaders will meet in an emergency session in Rome on Friday to deal with an unprecedented institutional crisis that deepened this week when the incoming commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, was forced to withdraw his entire team of commissioners. Barroso chose to backtrack when it became clear that members of the European Parliament would vote down his choice of commissioners.
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/ 12 December 2003
Boeing’s corporate reputation took a fresh knock last week when it emerged that the aerospace group had invested up to -million in venture capital funds run or staffed by Washington insiders.