Haier Bids for Maytag
June 21st, 2005PRC appliance company Haier is offering to buy Maytag. This after China’s Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC business. CNOOC is also considering an offer to buy UNOCAL.
Of note, for its Maytag bid Haier is partnering with two big U.S. private equity firms, Bain and Blackstone. The New York Times reports Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are advising CNOOC on a possible Unocal bid.
As PRC companies start buying well-known US firms, I imagine we’ll hear outcries like those made when Japanese interests bought Rockefeller Center and other high-profile US properties. Personally, I don’t see anything to panic about. Our security risk seems to come from dependence on foreign oil, not in who owns the shares of some of the firms that distribute that oil.
PRC money coming back to the US in the form of investment is generally a good thing, and jumbo deals are a natural outgrowth of China’s economic development. Plus, after preaching about how China should liberalize various sectors, we generally shouldn’t resist PRC investments here. We should, however, try to use such acquisitions as leverage to demand further opening up in China.
Let me offer a list of other inbound deals bankers can try to put together:
- Quan Ju De (Peking Roast Duck chain) bids for McDonald’s
- People’s Daily buys the Tribune Corp.
- CCTV buys CBS
- CICC acquires Morgan Stanley
- Brilliant Automotive buys Ford
- SAIC acquires GM.