Are european car companies moving towards the Anglo American Business Context as a result of the global concentration process?

1 INTRODUCTION Whilst Britain, in concert with USA, has been at the vanguard of free market economics, the rest of Europe has stood at odds to them, by clinging to varying levels of state regulation and intervention. Eastern Europe lags even further behind, as it only escaped the shackles of total state regulation relatively recently. Yet seismic changes in the East and significant shifts in the West have opened Europe’s frontiers to seemingly inexorable market forces. The deregulation and privatisation that has occurred in the continent merely echoes that has already occurred in America and Britain. This is not to say that the Anglo- American business model is universally accepted in Europe, but that it has become far more of an economic and structural driver than was previously thought. Corporate consolidation, globalisation and corporate alliances have now become a fact of life, and European national governments now have less power than ever to stop these trends. As summarised in the table below, thriving merger and acquisition activity in Europe testifies to this change and demonstrates the new-found transparency of the market (Gurney, 2000). Total European Merger & Acquisition volume 1990-1999 244 192 186 203 205 329 383 532 842 644 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Source: Thomson IFR securities Data Company, J.P. Morgan estimates note: 1999 First half M e r g e r & A c q u i s i t i o n # o f d e a l s