Taken for a Ride [antikvár]

INTR OD UCTION: rp 1 he deals keep getting bigger. Merger mania gripped the business world in 1998. Oil-industry titans Exxon and Mobil fused together four months after British Petroleum acquired Amoco. Citicorp merged with Travelers Group into a financial-services conglomerate a week before BankAmerica joined up with NationsBank. Telecommunications companies fell like a blur of alphabetized dominoes. AT&T took TCI, Bell Atlantic Corp. hooked up with GTE, and SBC Communications bought Ameritech. But every oil deal, bank marriage, and phone merger paled in comparison to the shocker of the year, Daimler-Benz AG's $36 billion buyout of Chrysler Corporation. Daimler, the biggest company in Germany, reached across the Atlantic and grabbed an American industrial icon, setting off an unprecedented frenzy of consolidation in the global automotive industry. Scrappy, patriotic Chrysler, the smallest of Detroit's vaunted Big Three, lost its independence. Proud and powerful Daimler showed the world that German ambitions extended far beyond Europe's borders. The creation of Daimler-Chrysler was the greatest of experiments in cross-