Going Beyond The Indian Shores
The last few years have seen a lot of acquisitions by the Indian companies of foreign companies and such big ticket acquisitions have been made by the big industrial houses of the country like Tatas and Birlas and others. Suzlon's acquisition of the Portugal company's stake in German RE-power Systems for $ 122 million, ONGC's acquisition of Imperial Energy were the talk of the town. These developments have led to a new thinking amongst other houses to seek green pastures elsewhere.
There were times when such acquisitions were not even imaginable. The trend reveals a welcome shift in the attitude amongst corporate leaders to spread their wing beyond the shores of India. In the not so distant past we were used to the sights of multinational companies setting up their shops in different parts of the country and now it is turn of India to make its presence felt everywhere in other parts of the globe. In this respect L.N.Mittal's name would obviously come uppermost in the minds of all, though he settled in the U.K. and has been running his steel empire from there he started his career in India and learnt the tricks of the trade here. And his success on a global scale must have inspired others to seek opportunities in the overseas.
These acquisitions go to exhibit a kind of confidence in the emergent new order in which Indian corporate houses have started taking the world on their terms and look upon themselves as equal world players shedding all their earlier inhibitions and inferiority complexes. The foreign acquisition route has been preferred not only by the established big houses but companies which are not so big and well-known are chalking out plans to go global. For example Indian Structural Engineering Company Limited has recently declared to set a holding company in Switzerland to cater to the needs of structural products to other Asian and African Countries. Similarly Titagarh Wagons limited have ambitions to expand beyond India to take advantage of the proposed Asian Rail Road Project.
These mode of expansion has been greatly helped by the relaxation of the rule governing flow of funds outside by the government, cheap corporate buys and the newly found confidence amongst the Indian corporate houses. It is believed that the overseas investment this year has crossed almost $12 billion and poised to grow further. Indian companies have created 3 lakh jobs in the USA and their contribution to the US economy between 2004 and 2008-2009 was to the tune $105 billion. The foreign assets and liabilities account for nearly 60 percent of our gross domestic product and our total foreign investment by the end of 2008-2009 was $67 billion.
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