The empire strikes back.

Is it just me that wonders how come all of a sudden Indians and Indian organisations have
become so aggressive on the business front ? The dust had not yet settled on the purchase of
Arcelor (Europe's steel giant) by the very-Indian-but-based-inUK Mittal Steel group,
when the Indian Steel giant Tata acquired another big name in steel "Corus".

And now, we hear that Tata has picked up the luxury automobile marquees "Jaguar" and
"LandRover" from American auto-major Ford. Being an auto-enthusiast, I am glad that an
Indian company owns such world-renowed brands. But at the same time, I am not really
sure how Tata is going to add value to these brands, which have been bleeding for quite some
time (which was why Ford put them up for sale, in the first place).

As far as making steel goes, the Tatas are renowned, having been in the business for
decades. But their car manufacturing arm is pretty nascent and their cars have always
been plagued with minor niggles and even serious issues, unlike the awesome reliability of
Japanese cars. Anyway, all the best to the Tatas to make a success out of this acquisition.

Europeans could not (and many have still not been able to) reconcile to the fact of the brown man buying a white company, especially one that is as renowned as Arcelor (supposedly a
jewel in the EU's crown). The Arcelor chief even tried to have a Russian company buy (atleast
ownership stays white, eh!) them instead of the Mittals and there were quite some racist
comments floating around during the deal-making.

The same feelings would surface again with this deal inked by Tata, only to be replaced by
acceptance of the changing world order. From what I read in the papers, the unions were
actually happy that an Indian company was buying them, because they felt Indians would
be more humane in the treatment of workers and not follow the hire-and-fire policy which
is so common in the west.

As if to confirm their belief, Ratan Tata (head of the Tata group) announced that all the
workers would be retained and no lay-offs are planned post-acquisition.

So, hopefully we should be seeing Jags and LandRovers on the streets of India soon. Waiting
for the day.