Cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a part of everyday life for German executives in the face of globalization. Currently, many Chinese and Indian companies are investing in medium-sized companies in Germany. For German executives, these acquisitions are not "hostile" but appreciated takeovers. But a closer inspection shows various challenges in such intercultural M&A.

The economic geographers Prof. Martina Fuchs and Martin Schalljo are researching these difficulties within a project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Methodologically they evaluate narrative interviews with top managers of German industries, to reconstruct the general structural logics of takeover interpretations.

Schalljo reported that German managers often see their new business partners as very hierarchical and bureaucratic. Although the young investors would often be referred to as ,learning investors', the interviews show quite the opposite:  the German managers tried as much as possible to keep their partners out of the operational processes.

Schalljo: "One of the interviewed German managers called the Chinese side of the Board ,foreign body'. Another manager was glad that the partners were not housed in the factory, but outside in another city."
The hermeneutic look behind the scenes thus revealed significant levels of interference in these cross-border M&A, so that the financially welcome acquisition seems to be seen as a kind of ,marriage of convenience'.

Fuchs: "The old headlines warning about ,Chinese shopping spree' in the German mittelstand or about the ,the Indian Tiger', are polemics. But it would be wrong to tell just smooth success stories about such acquisitions. Behind the scenes, much effort is waiting for the parties of such cross-border M&A, ultimately on both sides."