Firms such as Philips, Apple and Siemens are known to have taken a more activist line on due diligence sourcing than small jewellery businesses or, equally, big business sectors such as the automobile industry.
But nudged by Arnaud Montebourg, the French industry minister, Siemens, GE's German rival, came up on June 17th with its own more complicated offer in partnership with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries MHII) of Japan, shearing off Alstom's gas-turbine business and setting up a series of joint ventures with MHI in other energy areas.Now counterbids are flying thick and fast.
Mr Montebourg seemed keen on the idea that Siemens would acquire Alstom's energy assets, in turn ceding its transport operations to the French firm to create two European champions.
Having bought Germany's Siemens out of their joint venture in July, Nokia now does little else (though it is keeping its maps division and many patents).
This ruined the company's Christmas sales.Some analysts argue that Siemens should have never gone into making handsets because it is a completely different business from its other manufacturing activities, which range from trains to medical equipment and power turbines.
Last week Siemens announced the purchase of Diagnostic Products Corporation in Los Angeles for around $1.86 billion €1.544 billion) as part of its expansion at the pre-treatment end of medical care.In this section Who's afraid of Gazprom?
Some Siemens divisions, such as power generation, automotive parts and drives, or medical equipment, are world leaders.
Siemens has shifted new labour-intensive production abroad, to India, China or Romania, although it relented in 2004 when it gave mobile-phone production to two plants in North Rhine-Westphalia rather than in Hungary.This decision was part of a landmark deal with IG Metall, Germany's biggest blue-collar union, which extended the working week at those plants from 35 hours to 40.
Bosch-Siemens, a maker of electrical appliances with a huge plant in Stuttgart, was hit, along with Alsthom Power Generation, five aluminium companies, and Varta, a big battery maker.
Partly because the Siemens-led alternative was on the table, GE had to make concessions, and ended up in a complex set of joint ventures, in some cases with the meddling French state as a partner.
400 JOBS TO GO IN NEWCASTLE The ripples of 9/11 have reached the Tyne almost one year on: 400 jobs are to be axed by Siemens Power Generation at their CA Parsons plant in Newcastle.
