Foreign acquisitions in US at new highs
It's no secret. The fall of the dollar has made a whole range of US companies vulnerable to purchase by both foreign competitors and foreign investment companies. Nowhere was the diversity of sources for such investments better shown than in the recent multibillion rescue lines/investments made in faltering financial institutions; Citigroup propped by an Abu Dhabi investment group, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley by a Chinese government investor fund, and Merrill Lynch by Singaporean interests.
According to a story from Bloomberg News ("An infusion from afar", 1/4/08), the buying spree took a sharp uptick in the last quarter of 2007. "Buyers from Dubai to the Netherlands accounted for 46 percent of the $230.5 billion of U.S. mergers and acquisitions announced in the last quarter of 2007." That set a record, even as domestic deals were dwindling thanks to the subprime crisis.
Among the biggest deals were the purchase by Canada's TD Bancorp of US chain Commerce Bank (8.1 billion), and the purchase by Finland's Nokia of digital map software company Navteq ($8.1 billion).
More such frenzied investment in US companies is inevitable, especially if the dollar keeps being weak. The last few years have seen a gradual retreat by many US corporations from foreign investments and the launch of non-US companies into oligopoly leaders. If the US purchases of firms across the world signaled the expansion of US commercial power and a sign of the dollar's strength, that tide has long ebbed and the commercial power is now coming from lots of other places.
7:37:28 PM 
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