TEXT C The world is going through
the biggest wave of mergers and acquisitions ever witnessed. The process sweeps
from hyperactive America to Europe and reaches the emerging countries with
unsurpassed might. Many in these countries are looking at this process and
worrying: "Won’t the wave of business concentration turn into an uncontrollable
anti-competitive force" There’s no question that the big are
getting bigger and more powerful. Multinational corporations accounted for less
than 20% of international trade in 1982. Today the figure is more than 25% and
growing rapidly. International affiliates account for a fast-growing segment of
production in economies that open up and welcome foreign investment. In
Argentina, for instance, after the reforms of the early 1990s, multinationals
went from 43% to almost 70% of the industrial production of the 200 largest
firms. This phenomenon has created serious concerns over the role of smaller
economic firms, of national businessmen and over the ultimate stability of the
world economy. I believe that the most important forces behind
the massive M & A wave are the same that underlie the globalization process:
falling transportation and communication costs, lower trade and investment
barriers and enlarged markets that require enlarged operations capable of
meeting customers’ demands. All these are bed recreate the same threats to
competition that were feared nearly a century ago in the U. S., when the
Standard Oil trust was broken up. The mergers of telecom companies, such as
World Com, hardly seem to bring higher prices for consumers or a reduction in
the pace of technical progress. On the contrary, the price of communications is
coming down fast. In cars, too, concentration is increasing—witness Daimler and
Chrysler, Renault and Nissan—but it does not appear that consumers are being
hurt. Yet the fact remains that the merger movement must be
watched. A few weeks ago, Alan Greenspan warned against the mega mergers in the
banking industry. Who is going to supervise, regulate and operate as lender of
last resort with the gigantic banks that are being created Won’t multinationals
shift production from one place to another when a nation gets too strict about
infringements to fair competition And should one country take upon itself the
role of "defending competition" on issues that affect many other nations, as in
the U.S. vs. Microsoft case Toward the new business wave, the writer’s attitude can be said to be ______.