In August, Wall Street was abuzz with news that state-run Korea Development Bank would consider acquiring that ailing edifice of American Investment Banking Lehman Brothers whose history parallels the growth of the United States and its energetic drive towards prosperity and international prominence in 1850s.
Lehman Brothers is a hostile take-over candidate with Goldman Sachs upgrading it a buy and its stock jumping 13.1%, or $1.80, to $15.52, in midday trading. Over the past three months, the firm's stock has lost 59.7% of its value, and 73.5% of its value over the past year.
This is not just the story of Lehman Brothers. But many an investment firm has taken a beating this summer on Wall Street with fallen profits and downgrades.
Even finance mortgage company Freddie May was helped out of its blues just a few days ago. Merrill Lynch found a white knight to rescue it from it's woes in a Singapore Fund.
Multi-billion dollar bailouts of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, and UBS, by governments in Asia and the Middle East make for a nice reading to the emerging clout of Asian Money and Middle East, Far East money.
- B/R Ticket Guide
This week we heard of one of India's Top Businessman Anil Ambani putting in his application for a buyout of English Premier League club, Newcastle United.
This is close in the footsteps of yet another Indian Businessman Vijay Mallya buying into Formula One Team Spyker/Midland/Force India. Of course, the Tata Group has walked away with the Jaguar deal writing another page in the history of Indian business clamouring for Foreign companies in their takeover bids.
The Chinese are not far off, they actually started the trend with their stakes in multi-billion dollar funds in the United States. China has used its reserves of US $ 1.4 Trillion mostly to buy U.S. Treasury Bonds.
The Lenovo buyout of IBM's PC business, CNOOC's (China National Offshore Oil Company) bid for Unocal, prospective bids by MinMetals for Noranda, the Haier Group bid for Maytag, and others.
Traditional methods of wagers in business are disappearing and a new business dictum is taking shape with divisions between foreign and local disappearing.
International business is epitomizing the trend of Marshall McLuhan's theory of a global village and trying to bring in all under one umbrella.
On the broader spectrum, sport has to also try to live up to this dictum. The Super Aguri Formula One team was supposed to be bought out by Korean Car maker Hyundai Motor Company and this deal is still in the works.
Traditional owners of business are giving way to new owners who may span the globe or come from Timbuctoo in the middle of Africa. One cannot say that only American or British ownership is better for these companies. What matters in the end is that business survives and that people who depend on this business survive.
Formula One has to accept that there are bound to be changes and that the traditional settings will change to embrace more international settings.
It seems like some of us just aren't up to it!
[All information collated from the web of different financial web sites and such]
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