Management and unions, who hold half the seats on the company's supervisory board, are now holding the corporate equivalent of a war council. No foreign company has yet succeeded with a hostile bid in Germany and Vodafone's predatory swoop has shocked public opinion here. In the media, it has unleashed a heated debate about globalisation and Anglo-Saxon corporate aggression. The leading popular daily, Bild, condemned the bid and called for shareholders and the Mannesmann board to resist the bid. And German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also joined in the criticism.
Hostile takeovers destroy corporate culture.
They harm the target but they also, over the medium term, harm the predator as well. Companies such as Daimler, BMW and Deutsche Bank have led a recent wave of German takeovers of foreign firms. But German industry has remained largely forbidden territory to outsiders. An industrial giant Mannesmann is Europe's biggest mobile phone company, but it also has numerous other interests, particularly in engineering. Vodafone is expected to sell these non-telecoms businesses, prompting fears about job losses.