Siemens Boss Goes Off the Rails in Twitter Rant
Bashing Margrethe Vestager for doing her job is hypocritical and self-serving. The Siemens-Alstom train merger looks shaky on antitrust grounds.
A furious rage-tweet is not the best way for a CEO to get merger approval from competition regulators.
Photographer: Michaela Handrek-Rehle/BloombergA furious rage-tweet is not the best way for a CEO to get merger approval from competition regulators. Yet Siemens boss Joe Kaeser indulged in exactly that on Monday, blasting Margrethe Vestager – Europe’s top antitrust official – as “backward” and overly technocratic because of her likely rejection of his company’s rail merger with France’s Alstom SA. “It must be bitter if you are technically right, but do everything wrong for Europe,” he tweeted.
It’s hard to dismiss this as just an emotional, off-the-cuff reaction, given the recent drum-beat of criticism against Vestager from both France and Germany, which have thrown their full weight behind the deal. Rejecting an Alstom-Siemens tie-up would be “an economic error and a political mistake,” French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said last week. German economy minister Peter Altmaier said he had a “keen interest” in the deal going through. No wonder Kaeser felt he was on safe ground.