Germany, Inc.: The New German Juggernaut and Its Challenge to World Business

By Werner Meyer-Larsen

"Ten strong egos, three different strategies, and one major target. Enter Deutschland AG: Volkswagen v. Ford; Bertelsmann v. Time Warner; Hoechst, BASF, and Bayer v. DuPont; Allianz v. Metropolitan Life; Lufthansa v. American Airlines; Airbus v. Boeing....The contest is thrilling, intoxicating even. The figures of Deutschland AG versus those of Corporate America- everything is so right, it's really wrong, when you come right down to it." As Japan's sun sinks slowly in the West, a formidable new competitor has risen to replace her as America's chief rival in the battle for global business leadership. Emboldened by reunification and its role as leader of the European Union, Germany is flexing its muscles. For the first time in history, a transatlantic global conglomerate is rapidly taking shape, its policies defined by a small band of German business elites. What are the economic, sociopolitical, and cultural forces driving the new German expansionism? What is the strategy behind it, and how threatening is it really? Who are the major players involved and what can we expect from them in the years ahead? How do Germany's plans fit with the ultimate unification of European economies under the euro? And perhaps most intriguing, to what extent has American post-cold war policy been deliberately skewed to encourage the hegemony of Germany, Inc., and why? Written by Werner Meyer-Larsen, a journalist who has closely covered the transatlantic business beat for over a decade, this book provides answers to these and other questions of crucial importance to every businessperson. While the merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler in March 1999 is popularly held to have been the opening shot in a new war of global attrition, it was, as Meyer-Larsen explains, in reality a major turning point in a German offensive that has been quietly gaining ground for some years. Since the late 1980s, a handful of Germany's most powerful industrial concerns has been steadily chipping away at America's lead in a range of sectors, including publishing, air travel, steel, insurance, and cars. Leading the attack is a new generation of ambitious young executives, unencumbered by the political restrictions (or sins) of their predecessors, and bolstered by a virtual banking cartel controlled by Deutsche Bank. Compelled as much by their anxiety over the post-cold war power vacuum as a desire to strut their stuff on a global scale, their battle cry is "Go West! Think big!" Meyer-Larsen traces the growth of these companies and the evolution of Germany, Inc. He takes us inside Daimler, Lufthansa, VW, Bertelsmann, Hoechst, Siemens, Allianz, and the other top players to reveal their strategies. And he provides vivid portraits of the men who control their reins-including Ferdinand "the Shark" Piech of VW; Bertelsmann's Thomas Middelhoff, a.k.a. "Mr. Spock"; "Mr. Stockmarket," Rolf E. Breuer of Deutsche Bank; and Gerhard Crommer of Krupp, the "Spider in the Web of Steel"-explaining, in each case, the likely impact of each leader's style on the future of his industry. A penetrating, fact-filled exploration of a development of paramount commercial, geopolitical, and cultural importance, Germany, Inc. is must reading for businesspeople, policymakers, and students of current affairs everywhere.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471353574
• ISBN13: 9780471353577
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The battle between Deutschland AG and Corporate America

Unlike the book "J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e Rage: J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e Business and Its Assault on the West " by Leon Anderson, in which J-a-p-a-n is some sort of foreign environment that is out to get the U.S., this book outlines many reasons that we have common interests in the expansion of Germany. As you read the reviews that seem to cover the back cover of the book and "Part I: Go West, Go Global the New German Challenge," They probably do not want to spoil the rest of the book for you. I was personally interested in the mistakes made by the German companies, as the company I work for was bought as part of a global expansion. Some of the mistakes came close. My personal favorite is our company. The salespeople in Germany are used to the company making a product and then giving the consumer the choice from the product line. At the first confrontation with a US customer with the "you will use one of our variations," the customer told the salesman that when they made something to the user specification of the CUSTOMER, not the manufacturer, they would buy it. Did the salesman learn that the customer knows what tools are necessarily better than the manufacturer's? No. The German salesman just said This must not be our customer and looked for another one. He is still looking. This book shows three strategies with 10 cases. Werner Meyer-L-a-r-s-e-n uses well-known corporations. He keeps cases on a level that does not require you to be an economist with a minor in math.

Helpful Background on Germany's Rising Business Stars

The great weakness of the American business press is that it writes a lot about American business, a little about Japanese business, and almost nothing about anything else. As a result, most Americans are very uninformed about the major nonAmerican corporations and their leaders. This book is a useful remedy for reducing that ignorance. You will have a chance to get a thumbnail sketch of Daimler-Benz through the merger with Chrysler, Deutsche Bank through the buying of Bankers Trust, Bertelsmann and its expansion into worldwide entertainment, Allianz (the world's largest insurance company), Krupp and Thyssen through their merger, Hoechst and their merger with Rhone-Poulenc, Siemens, VW, Lufthansa and Airbus. Each profile also details the current leader and his background.Of interest to those concerned about Nazi roots of some of the older enterprises is that the book covers that ground somewhat. You'll have to look at specialized books to get more. As German businesses become more effective world competitors and U.S. presences, chances are you'll be dealing with these companies. Now is a good time to start getting acquainted.As the context for this book, the author argues that the 50th anniversary of the former West German democracy, the 1989 end of the cold war, and the rise of a new generation of German business leaders mean that German businesses will "Go West" and "Think Big."As anyone knows who has done business in Germany, the current leaders know a lot about the U.S. and speak American English well. To expand beyond Europe, the U.S. looks good. A variety of strategies are pursued, which the author puts into categories that didn't quite make sense to me -- perhaps it's the translation.The book could have used a stronger analytical base. This is written more at the level of a weekly news magazine than a business book. With high cost equity capital and weaker technology in New Economy businesses, German businesses are in a poor position to play on the world stage in the emerging opportunity areas. Primarily, these are old economy businesses where scale is important that are trying to keep up. Because they have to pay cash and are usually not the biggest company in the world, the German businesses usually have to buy into marginal American operations. Getting Chrysler for stock is a function of the abysmal valuations of the auto companies in the U.S.Having encouraged German clients to take the U.S. market more seriously over the last two decades, I'm glad to see the proof that it is finally starting to happen. I am sure that Act II will be much more impressive than the Act I that began with the DaimlerChrysler merger. Naturally, the jury is still out on how well all of these mergers will work. It's not easy getting two giants from different cultures to minuet together.Good luck in overcoming your misconception stalls about German businesses, and finding new opportunities as a result!Donal

And While You're at it, Jurgen, Change the Oil

You can tell the author is a business magazine writer, and that each chapter is a vast expansion of a more crunched down version of what would normally be an article in, for example, Forbes or Business Week. I'm not sure the typology into which the book divides types of big German businesses really works (e.g., "Anti-comglomerate," "Pivots") but then Teutonic writers have always over-stressed forced classifications. Read Spengler if you don't believe this. Unlike Spengler, however (but yet eerily echoing Spengler's theme of "The Decline of the West") this book is easy to read, and rewards even a distracted skimmer with great informatin housed in biographical digressions focusing on current leaders of distinguished German companies. We learn that Thomas Middelhof from Bertelsman wrote his PhD on the internet in 1985, which seems to give him more credibility to be tangling with AOL. We are told that Jurgen Shrempp actually knows how to tear down and reassemble a truck engine, having dropped out of school and become a mechanic before he got in touch with his inner taskmaster and went to engineering school. No other chief of a big auto company can do this. This reminds me of how the computer companies fit here. Who's the better leader for Apple? The guy who made them in his garage, or the guy from Pepsi who writes autobiographies focusing on how his wife like to stay in Connecticut while he, John Scully, takes a break from selling sugar water in order to "change the world"? So we learn of clever and practical Germans, with tons of money, expanding into the post-Cold war business culture of "America" and with the refreshing admission that the more American you are, the better you business is. This is a sea change from the viewpoint of American academic pretentions from the 1980s (my time in college), who stressed the superiority of things European, and downgraded American habits and practices as unduly "puritan" (i.e., hard-working) and too obsessed with "progress" to appreciate the finer points of life, to be found in more continental patterns of things like more frequent trips to open-air markets, and taking 3 hour lunches. Read Tibor Scitovsky's "The Joyless Society" to see my point. And Rollo May. And bob Goudzwaard (Dutch interloper, but with plenty of anti-American opinions). Compared to this, these Germans profiled here are portrayed as so many Rodney Dangerfields from "Back to School" who buy their way into old institutions, and along the way spice things up for everyone else who is just slogging through. Still, you have to wonder what was in it for Chrysler to get eaten by the ambitious Daimler, driven by the truck mechanic. You will also learn what the intials "AUDI" stand for, and how Porsche and Pietche fit together. The portrait of Alfred Krupp may be too sympathetic, compared to the treatment by Kai Bird in his book "The Chariman." But this author does certainly probe into the