The Tao of Business

Chinese takeovers: Being eaten by the dragon | The Economist:

Image via The Economist.

A FEW years ago two executives of an international oil company were working late in its otherwise deserted office in England. A stunning young Chinese woman arrived at reception. “She was very attractive, decked out in Gucci,” one of them says. She delivered a letter from Sinopec, one of China’s giant, state-controlled energy firms, proposing a multibillion-dollar takeover. The executive adds, a little wistfully, that she then disappeared into the night in a car with local licence plates, never to be seen again.