Joaquín Almunia, the EU’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said that, “We have good reasons to ask these funds to declare what kind of assets they want to invest in, what criteria they apply to decide their investments, and what the distribution of their investments is”.
I agree, very good thing to ask for transparency indeed.
erm, why? since when were government investments in industry clear and transparent? Let me see, if you take a small sample of the large countries, say Germany, France, UK and Italy, they have large investments (many time controlling interests) in so many private firms.
How transparent is that? Look at the how Germany and France squabbled over EADS and nearly drove the company into a tailspin (pun intended). And they dont have any problems in having an Indian on the board (specially ironic when almost the entire European intelligensia got upset about an Indian purchasing an European crown jewel!!!). Also remember that France considers a Yogurt manufacturer (Danone) to be strategic!
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, my dear Sir. When people say, "do as I say" and "forget what I do", they become objects of derision. Let us start inside the EU first, there is no harm in sovereign wealth fund investments. And I am all for transparency but when asking for transparency, public sector investments should be included as well.
You could start with making the ancient company law regimes a bit more modern!
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment