EU Fears Chinese Takeover of European Companies Amid Wuhan Coronavirus-Induced Downturn
“European countries should buy stakes in companies to counter the threat of Chinese takeovers,” the EU antitrust chief suggests.
The European Union (EU) fears that China could exploit the economic downturn caused by the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak to take over European companies.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager called for the revamping of European law to block Chinese state-owned firms from taking over vulnerable European businesses, the European news reports said.
“European companies have long been in the sights of Chinese rivals, but the sharp economic downturn caused by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent steep falls in share prices across the continent have increased the potential for overseas bids,” the London-based daily Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Vestager, who is also the executive vice-president of the European Commission (EU’s executive arm), stressed the urgency of the Chinese threat by vowing to publicize Brussels’s regulatory counter-measures “as quickly as possible.” The top eurocrat’s warning coincides with the news of Germany, Europe’s largest economy, heading into a ‘deep recession’ amid a full-blown coronavirus outbreak in the country.
With the epicenter of the life-threatening contagion moving from Asia to the West, the leading European economies — Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain — have been the worst hit. The Wuhan virus outbreak could cost as much as $4.1 trillion, or 5 percent of the global economic output (GDP), The Philippines-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates. Europe’s export-dependent economies are expected to bear a heavy brunt of the coronavirus-induced global downturn.
The French broadcaster Euronews reported EU commissioner Vestager’s statement:
European countries should buy stakes in companies to counter the threat of Chinese takeovers, the Commission has said, part of the EU’s attempts to protect its businesses amid the coronavirus outbreak.
It has been long feared by some that certain companies maybe targeted by Chinese rivals, but the sharp economic downturn caused by the recent outbreak and steep falls in share prices across the continent have increased the vulnerability of businesses for potential foreign bids.
Margrethe Vestager, European Competition Commissioner, told the Financial Times: “We don’t have any issues of states acting as market participants if need be — if they provide shares in a company, if they want to prevent a takeover of this kind.
“It’s very important that one is aware that there is a real risk that businesses that are vulnerable can be the object of a takeover,” Vestager said.
“The situation now really underlines the need so we work really intensively. This is one of our main priorities.”
Possible changes were being considered before the coronavirus outbreak and while there is unlikely to be immediate action, Vestager did say she wanted regulations that acted as a deterrent and that these should be drawn up “as quickly as possible”.
The changes would target corporations owned or backed by non-EU governments, to address mainly French and German concerns, that their financial power grants them an unfair advantage over European competitors.
The European concerns highlight how the Communist regime in Beijing cynically plans to take advantage of other countries’ misfortune caused by the outbreak, which originated in central China. While the West and the rest of the developing world reels under the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus, Beijing dreams of wiping out the competition and dominating the global stage.
This Communist regime knows no shame. China’s Xinhua news agency called on the devastated world to “thank China, rather than blame it” for its handling of the outbreak, according to Reuters. The state-run news outlet also warned that if Beijing were to stop the export of medicines, “the United States would sink into the hell of a novel coronavirus epidemic.”
While arresting the whistleblowers and covering up the origins of the contagion, China’s leading diplomats have been spreading vile conspiracy theories accusing the U.S. Army of planting the deadly virus in central China. The Liberal mainstream media in the West, which played useful idiots for the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, are busy carrying water for China’s Communist regime.
Secretary Pompeo blasts China for “disinformation campaign” over Wuhan coronavirus outbreak (March 25)
[Cover image via YouTube]
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Comments
Let them buy the companies and just nationalize them. That’s what socialist do, right.
China will just buy the politicians and rule you anyway. China should be treated like the threat they are. End all trade with China. Take your companies back.
Let them buy, then sue economic and loss of life damages, and take their stake to settle damage awards.
Looking at China’s overall conduct, I think it is time for firm pushback on all fronts.
I really like this idea, it’s a way for families that lost people to Coronavirus to be able to collect from the Chinese.
The Chinese lied and people died.
” The state-run news outlet also warned that if Beijing were to stop the export of medicines, “the United States would sink into the hell of a novel coronavirus epidemic.”
Well, it would do that. It may also elevate this from a possibly accidental breach of containment into a possible bio WMD attack on the world.
Lying and covering up the breach was bad enough, but taking deliberate action such as impeding the medical supply chain is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish indeed.
Even if it was still an accidental release the mere move to ban medicine to the United States would be seen as hostile.
If this isn’t a wake up call to those idiots in DC that we need to start making companies move out of China and to other countries or back to the United States, which I think is better, than I don’t know how the US makes it to the year 2100.
Immediately ramp up production of pharmaceuticals here, and cut off all Chinese medical products. That would fix their wagons.
CCP-PRC nationals should be expelled immediately too.
The fact that the Chinese have said this means medicines and medical supplies need to be treated as a national security. We need to think of China’s handling of the coronavirus as a dry run to test our defense procedures.
So, the remaining vestiges of European enterprise could end up controlled by the Chinese communists, rather than the Belgian communists. Quel désastre!
I gotta admit that having the Chinese deal with the resident Islamic overlords will be amusing from a distance.
Subotai Bahadur
Globalism!
Ya know, I voted for Trump not because I liked him as a person but because I wanted him to take a flame thrower to Washington DC. But its impossible not to admit that the businessman we elected has been vocal about China since 2015. I thought he was right then and this fear by our allies just confirms it.
To its bare thin credit, GOP members have been calling out China for years, even the Rom-bot did that against Obama in the debates. Dems were notoriously silent and the media covered their asses for it.
Trump is the first one to actually do anything about it. There’s no doubt in my mind that Romney’s “talk” would have stopped at that in the campaign if he had actually been elected.
If China had invaded Hawaii and completely taken it over with the subsequent deaths, they could have easily killed as many as have been killed worldwide. Yet no nation is acting like this was an attack. The “Wet market” theory is BS and everyone in the US intelligence service knows it. So that makes this either an accident or deliberate. If it was an accident then they have to pay for the damage. If it was deliberate then not only do they have to pay but they must be cut off from all Western markets and investments. To allow them to take advantage of their own misdeed is to surrender to their treachery. This proves once and for all times that China cannot be trusted on any matter.
Hear Hear.
If the pictures of the wet markets are any indication of conditions there, they’re a petri dish of contamination and infection.
You want to see if a disease can be transmitted between species? Put cages of different animals within a few meters of each other and of carcasses hanging close by. To facilitate infection, let a light, variable breeze waft back and forth across them and allow the dripping juices to accumulate underfoot. Under these conditions, cross infection is not only possible, it’s almost certain.
.
In the news as of today it came from research in a lab in wuhan.
A worker was infected by a bat and he spread to the wet market and the rest of Wuhan.
“European countries should buy stakes in companies to counter the threat of Chinese takeovers”
I have a better idea.
Start treating China like everyone treated the USSR.
Did Europe or America allow the USSR to buy companies or parts of companies? Hell no.
Despite its coronavirus lies, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy says China is blameless:
“The reason that we’re in the crisis that we are today is not because of anything that China did”
Dumbasses of Europe: it’s already happened. The only fight is going to be between the islamists you imported, the russians and the chi-comms to see who your slavemasters are.
Isn’t that guy on the left John Oliver’s older brother?