But we should believe thew market is so wonderfully effective...

...or, maybe, for multis, it is? If all of them fight with the same weapons...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

There is something with Dell as well:

Dell finds evidence of misconduct in finance probe

Bribery to get business was right out in the open when I was in Europe.  US companies did it too until Lockheed (IIRC) got caught bribing in Japan and the Foreign Corrupt practices act was passed.  Now US companies set up off shore affiliates to work in those sorts of places.  We got lots of compliance training on this subject as the liability was to both the company and to the individual.

I've read that French companies could deduct bribes from their taxable income up until the late 90's.

My counterparts at various European companies were not too embarrassed to admit they had bag men in places like Nigeria.  The joke was Exxon's man could offer an official a nice pen.  Elf could offer a Mercedes.

A great business opportunity. Last time I checked ABB had a much higher p/e than Siemens, in spite of the companies being pretty equal otherwise.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Scandal widens in European car sector - Business - International Herald Tribune

Scandal widens in European car sector

By James Kanter and Carter Dougherty, International Herald Tribune PARIS

The chief executive of a leading French auto parts supplier stepped down Wednesday amid charges by prosecutors that he was aware of bribes allegedly paid to Germany's top automakers to win their business.

Directors at Faurecia, one of the biggest European makers of automotive interiors, met late Wednesday and announced the resignation of Pierre Lévi, saying that his departure was "in the best interests of the group." Prosecutors in Frankfurt had said last week that they were investigating Lévi in connection with up to €800,000, or $1 million, worth of bribes that they suspected were paid to managers at Volkswagen, Audi and BMW. Other investigations are under way into suppliers in Germany as well as Lear, which is based in the United States. Faurecia is majority-owned by PSA Peugeot Citroën, a leading French car manufacturer, and employs 60,000 people worldwide.

The fresh allegations come as competition is stiffening in Europe's blue- chip - but scandal-marred - automotive industry. Parts makers have consolidated and are increasingly seeking contracts with big car manufacturers outside their home markets. "We have seen a lot more business across European borders in a business that's long been characterized by German-to-German, French-to-French and Spanish-to-Spanish relationships," said Antonio Ferreira, a London-based manager for European component forecasts at CSM Worldwide, a consultancy. "The parts industry is growing smaller and smaller with fewer players, and the pressures are immense."

But instead of increasing transparency, that progress in cracking open national markets and fostering pan- European companies may have contributed to the seeming wave of corruption, other analysts said. Faced with the prospect of losing a bid for a large order to a competitor in an increasingly cutthroat market, paying a bribe may have seemed like the cheapest way to secure a hefty chunk of business, according to Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, the director of the Center for Automotive Studies in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. "The money one might pay to a customer is, in the end, a fraction of the cost of an overall shipment," Dudenhöffer said.

Caspar von Hauenschild, an executive board member of Transparency International Germany, a leading anti- corruption group, called the crackdown by German prosecutors overdue. The wave of bribery investigations represents "a kind of paradigm shift," said von Hauenschild, who is also a nonexecutive director of some German companies. "Even chief executives are now worried because investors simply don't like scandals," he said, warning that disaffected shareholders could sell shares in companies that become involved in corruption investigations. Von Hauenschild said that employees convicted of wrongdoing in Germany could face prison terms of up to five years under principles agreed to by member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based club of 30 wealthy countries.

The problem in the latest cases, according to von Hauenschild, partly lay in the way car companies had drawn up codes of conduct forbidding such practices - yet failed to impress the importance of those rules upon managers. "It was not enough," he said. "You have to let the people in the purchasing units know that there will zero tolerance for corruption and that if they don't adhere they will be fired."

(snip)

On Wednesday, prosecutors in Munich confirmed that they were also investigating possible bribery in transactions between Lear, a U.S. auto parts supplier based near Detroit, and BMW.

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet