No laissez-faire to be seen in Paris
Industrial policy in Europe is still very much a national affair. In France, the imminent sale of the Opella over-the-counter division of the pharmaceutical company Sanofi to New York private equity giant Clayton Dubilier & Rice has become a political issue.
What ibuprofen or aspirin is to Germans, Doliprane is to the French. So there is a lot of excitement about the mega deal, which values the company at 16 billion euros. The state investment company Bpifrance is taking a 2% stake in the company to help settle the situation. France's requirements for employment, production and investment in essential medicines in the country „will be respected“, Finance Minister Antoine Armand has said. Any breach of the agreements signed by the state, the financial investor and Sanofi is punishable by fines running into millions. This is how industrial policy is made in Paris.
Federal government appears unmoved by impending job cuts
The opposite is the case in liberal Berlin. Laissez-faire still prevails here: The sale of the German industrial robot manufacturer Kuka to the state-controlled Chinese group Midea, and the acquisition of the heating division of the family-owned Viessmann group, including heat pump technology, by the US group Carrier Global, caused some upset, but the sale of German companies is now really taking off:
Deutsche Bahn is selling its freight forwarding subsidiary DB Schenker to the Danish logistics company DSV for almost 15 billion euros, paving the way for the emergence of the global market leader in the sector. The federal government appears unmoved by the impending job cuts.
German industrial policy should become more recognisable
At the same time, Covestro is in the midst of becoming the first Dax-listed company to be taken over by an oil giant from the Gulf States. Adnoc from Abu Dhabi is paying more than 15 billion euros for the plastics group from Leverkusen. Here, too, the German government is staying out of it. With good reason: There are no overlaps that would give rise to fears of major job cuts, and Adnoc has 150 billion dollars to invest.
With regard to Commerzbank, the German government seems to have sleepwalked into the potential takeover of by Unicredit. Only now, and too late, is it reacting. Tough state intervention in France cannot be a model for Berlin's industrial policy. Nevertheless, the contours of German industrial policy should become more clearly recognisable. Simply staying out of it is not industrial policy.
