[转帖] [2012.12.01] Ratan Tata’s legacy 印度资本主义：塔塔的传家宝

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http://www.ecocn.org/thread-174283-1-1.html
【导读】印度塔塔集团掌管着一个庞大的商业帝国。董事长拉丹·塔塔将于下月28日退休。塔塔集团的繁荣会给印度资本主义带来怎样的启示？

Capitalism in India
印度的资本主义

Ratan Tata’s legacy
拉丹•塔塔的传家宝

India should learn from the career of its most powerful businessman
印度应向本国最厉害的商人借鉴经验

Dec 1st 2012 | from the print edition
2012.12.01 | 印刷版



IT IS easy to understand why Ratan Tata, who retires as chairman of Tata Sons on December 28th, is important. The conglomerate he runs is India’s largest private-sector concern, accounting for 7% of the stockmarket. It pays 3% of all India’s corporate tax and 5% of all its excise duty. You can live in a house, drive a car, make a phone call, season your food, insure yourself, wear a watch, walk in shoes, cool yourself with air-conditioning and stay in a hotel, all courtesy of Tata firms. Polite, elegant and reserved, Mr Tata has been the king of India’s corporate scene for the past two decades. Indians look up to him in much the same way that Italians once looked up to Gianni Agnelli at Fiat or Americans did to J.P. Morgan.

塔塔之子（Tata Sons）的董事长拉丹•塔塔【1】将于12月28日退休【2】。他是一个重要人物，原因不难理解。他经营着印度私营部门规模最大的的联合企业，其市值占整个股票市场的7%。其支付的企业税占印度全国的3%，消费税占5%。你住的房子、开的车、用的手机、食品上加的调料、为自己买的保险、戴的手表、走路穿的鞋子、给自己降温的空调、住的酒店，全是承蒙塔塔公司所赐。塔塔先生是一位高雅自矜的谦谦君子，在过去二十多年里，他一直是印度企业大军的“总司令”。他备受印度人民的敬重，正如过去菲亚特汽车（Fiat）的阿涅利•吉亚尼（Gianni Agnelli）【3】之于意大利人，约翰·皮尔鹏·摩根（J.P. Morgan）之于美国人。

In some ways, though, the reverence for Mr Tata is odd. He is not a geekish entrepreneur, like the high-tech wizards in Bangalore. He is an old-style dynast—the fifth generation to run his 144-year-old firm. He took time to grow into the job: when he took the reins in 1991 he struggled to assert himself. Even today, critics accuse him of being regal and secretive—and snipe that the group’s most successful business, TCS, its technology arm, is the one he left most alone.

不过从某些方面看，塔塔先生这么德高望重是不合常理的。与班加罗尔（Bangalore）【4】的高科技天才不同，他并不是一个只会埋头创业的人。他出身世家，是一个比较传统的人。塔塔公司已有144年的历史，而他是第5代接班人。他曾花了一段时间适应这份工作：在1991年接手公司时，为树立威信他下了不少功夫。即便是今天，一些批评家仍指责他过于威严、城府极深——还抨击他对集团里经营最成功的科技部门TCS【5】最不上心。

Nor can Tata be hailed as a financial paragon. After a wave of takeovers during the past decade, its return on capital is mediocre. The new boss, Cyrus Mistry, who comes from outside the family (Mr Tata has no children), may have to reorganise something of a ragbag conglomerate: alongside the stars like TCS or Jaguar Land Rover, a luxury carmaker, there is also a long trail of flabby and indebted businesses (see article).

塔塔也不能被誉为金融界的典范。在过去十年里，塔塔接管了一系列公司，可这一波收购的资本回报不多。新总裁塞勒斯•密斯特里（Cyrus Mistry）不是家族内部的成员（塔塔先生没有子嗣）。他接手的这个联合企业就是一个“大杂烩”，什么样的业务都有，因此，他可能必须做一些重组工作：塔塔有像TCS、捷豹路虎（奢侈品牌汽车制造商）【6】这样的知名公司，也有很多效率低下、负债累累的企业（另见文）。

And yet, for all that, Mr Tata’s career carries two powerful lessons for an introverted and corruption-obsessed India. First, that India has far more to gain than lose from the outside world. And second, that a company can be a force for progress.

然而，尽管如此，塔塔先生的职业生涯为闭关的、严重腐败的印度提供了两大经验。第一，外部世界给印度带来的收获远比损失要多。第二，一家公司也能成为进步的力量。

The hereditary ruler as hero
世袭统治者的英雄之路

Globalisation came easily to Mr Tata, who trained as an architect in America. Even today he would rather discuss car designs with young engineers than read management reviews. That education, and a streak of perfectionism, have served him well. He realised early on that as India’s economy opened in the 1990s its firms would have to raise their standards, benchmark themselves against the very best, and if necessary buy competitors. His foreign takeovers included Corus, a giant British steel firm, and Jaguar Land Rover. The first has been a financial disaster, the second a triumph. But both showed that Indian firms—and those from other emerging economies—deserve their place at the top table of global business.

塔塔先生曾在美国接受过建筑师培训，他很容易就能接受全球化。即便是今天，他也宁愿与年轻的工程师讨论汽车设计，而不是看管理评审报告。那样的教育背景，再加上几分追求完美的个性，让他受益良多。早些时候他就意识到，自20世纪90年代印度经济对外开放以来，印度的公司就必须提高自身水平，用最完美的标准要求自己，必要的话，还应收购竞争对手。他收购的国外公司包括英国钢铁巨头康利斯集团（Corus）【7】，还有捷豹路虎。前一场收购已经成为一个金融灾难，而后一场打了胜仗。但它们都表明了一个事实：印度的公司以及其他新兴经济体都足以在全球商业的顶尖层占一席之位。

Indians would love to claim that this lesson has been thoroughly learnt. Names like Mittal and Infosys are known all round the world. But India remains a country with too many protected industries, from shopping to coal mining and newspapers. Mr Tata himself was not always as keen to open up at home as he was to venture abroad. But for the most part he was a firm advocate of globalisation.

印度人当然会说，他们已经彻底掌握了这个经验。像米塔尔（Mittal）【8】、印孚瑟斯（Infosys）【9】这样的品牌如今已是世界闻名。但在印度，从购物、煤矿到报纸行业，国内大量行业仍在国家的庇佑之下。塔塔先生本人热衷于在境外进行风险投资，但他并不总是愿意开放自己在国内的企业。大体而言，他仍是全球化的忠实倡导者。

The other lesson from Mr Tata has to do with integrity. His group has not entirely avoided scandals. It faced a rogue trader in the early 2000s, and did not completely escape the furore over the bent award of telecoms licences in 2008. No doubt somewhere today, in this firm with $100 billion of sales, funny business is taking place. Rivals grumble that Tata’s current respectability masks a past spent toadying up to politicians in the years before and after India’s independence in 1947. But the fact is that Mr Tata, in public, and by widespread repute in private too, has stood against corruption. His attitude towards India’s political class has been one of polite distance. He has long attacked what he calls “vested interests”—code for crony capitalism, in which firms make profits by buying favours from officials and politicians.

从塔塔先生身上学到的另一个经验和正直的作风有关。他的集团也不是一点丑闻都没有。21世纪初期，该公司遇到了一名“流氓交易员”【10】；2008年，它经历了印度电信公司运营牌照分配丑闻【11】，到现在都还没完全撇清关系。毫无疑问，在销售额达1000亿美元的公司里内部，某些地方一定出了“故障”。竞争对手抱怨道，在1947年印度独立前后，塔塔一直向政客献殷勤。可这样的过去却被塔塔目前的名望掩盖了。但事实是，在公共场合，塔塔先生反对贪污；私下里也如此，在这一点人尽皆知。他一直礼貌地和印度政界保持距离。长久以来，他也一直抨击自己所指的“既得利益”——裙带资本主义的代称：公司向官员、政客行贿，得到好处，以此获利。

Looking in the mirror
照照镜子，自我反省

Crony capitalism has seldom seemed more of a threat to India. Back in the 1990s, the country’s leading firms—technology companies as well as Tata Sons—went to extraordinary lengths to be squeaky-clean. Family firms, which still control about 40% of India’s stockmarket profits, professionalised their management and listed their shares. But over the past decade things have gone backwards. The new money has been made in “rent-seeking” sectors, such as mining and infrastructure, with a lot of government involvement and little foreign competition; some mouth-wateringly large corruption scandals have occurred there. Too many family firms have lost interest in improving governance. Some, unwilling to relinquish control by issuing shares, have piled on debt, and now that they are in trouble, are bullying state-run banks to “extend and pretend”—roll over their loans rather than write them down. Such firms thus become state-supported zombies.

裙带资本主义对印度造成的威胁似乎很少像现在这么严重。回溯20世纪九十年代，印度的各个龙头公司（科技公司以及“塔塔之子”）为做到清正廉明而殚精毕力。家族企业仍控制着40%左右的印度股市利润。它们将管理专业化，并公开上市。但在过去十年里，情况却在倒退。人们在“寻租部门”【12】（比如矿业、基础设施业）敛财，因为政府干涉多、国外竞争少；这些行业里出现了一些腐败丑闻，其涉及金额之大让人垂涎三尺。太多家族企业已失去了改善治理的兴趣。有些已是债台高筑，因为它们不愿意发行股票，放弃控制权。由于身陷困境，他们便欺负国有银行——让它们“假装不知，延期还款”。这些公司并未对债务的账面价值进行减记，反而让它像雪球那样越滚越大。如此一来，这样的公司就成为政府支持下的木头人。

The Indian public is fed up. Anti-corruption agencies are newly vigilant. Business has become a hall of mirrors in which fingers point everywhere. Suspicion is so pervasive that even clean officials are terrified to prod along vital projects by clean companies for fear of being accused of favouritism.

印度的公众已经受够了。反腐机构最近才有所警觉。商业已成为一个装满镜子的大厅，可以发现到处都存在着欺诈。人们疑心很重，即便是清官，也不敢扶持白圭无玷的公司经营的重大项目，因为他们害怕被指控为徇私偏袒。

The problems in parts of the private sector have thus become a macroeconomic issue. Investment by private companies has slumped—the main reason why economic growth has slowed from 10% to about 5.5%.

因此，某些私营部门的弊病就变成了一个宏观经济问题。私企的投资骤减——这就是经济增长从10%降到5.5%的主要原因。

It is easy to blame all this on corrupt politicians. But somebody is paying the bribes. By standing out against graft so publicly and consistently, Mr Tata was ahead of his time. The irony is that by doing so he was preparing the way for the end of businesses such as his own. As India’s economy modernises and becomes more open and transparent, the rationale may disappear for sprawling, hereditary conglomerates, which use the bonds of kin to deal with a shortage of trust, and pool their managers and capital because the outside markets for these resources do not work well.

将这一切归咎于腐败的政客的确很容易。可是，有腐败就意味着有人行贿。塔塔先生反对钱权交易，既公开昭示， 又矢志不渝，在这一点上他是走在时代的前列。讽刺的是，他这么做也是在为类似他自己“塔塔之子”的一批企业准备“后事”。当印度的经济走向现代化，越来越开放、透明，那些囊括各种业务的大型家族企业就没有继续存在的理由了。之前，他们可以利用亲缘关系对付信任短缺的问题，共享经理人才和资本，因为那时这些资源的外部市场运作得并不好。

To that extent, Mr Tata may come to be seen as both the last of one breed of feudal corporate leaders—and the first ofanother more open bunch. Anybody who cares about India’s future, especially its billion consumers, should hope that the transition picks up speed again.

从这种程度上讲，塔塔先生可以视作封建企业领袖的仅存硕果，也可以被看成新一批更具开放心态企业家的领军人物。无论是谁，只要关心印度的未来，尤其是它的十亿消费大军，都应该希望过渡期能再短点儿。

from the print edition | Leaders


Background


【1】拉丹•塔塔
拉丹·塔塔是印度企业界的杰出代表。他掌管着一个庞大的商业帝国，经营领域从茶叶到钢铁、IT无所不包。

1991年，在集团创建150年的时候，塔塔成为集团董事长。
那时，印度开始逐渐脱离社会主义，Tata集团下面大大小小有250家公司，其中许多公司经营状况很差。
塔塔将公司数缩减到90家，并将Tata Consultancy募股上市。
至今，Tata Consultancy的股价上涨了50%。
塔塔不满足于自己的企业只在国内打拼，他一直敦促管理人士到海外开拓业务。

【2】塔塔退休
塔塔之子公司（Tata Sons）董事会日前选举塞勒斯·密斯特里（Cyrus P Mistry）接替拉丹·塔塔。Tata Sons公司是塔塔集团（Tata）的控股公司，73岁的现任董事长拉丹·塔塔（Ratan Tata）将于2012年12月退休。
现年43岁的塞勒斯并非塔塔家族的成员，而是亿万富豪、建筑业大亨帕朗吉·密斯特里（Pallonji Mistry）的小儿子。帕朗吉持有Tata Sons公司18.4%的股份，是其最大的股东。

【3】意大利显赫家族阿涅利——亚菲特汽车公司
在意大利，阿涅利家族是财富与荣耀的象征，人们习惯地将它称为“王族”。由阿涅利家族创办的菲亚特汽车公司，如今已成为意大利最大的工业集团。
但是据最近报道，这个家族的继承人，现任菲亚特副总裁的埃尔肯因吸毒过量昏迷，如此轰动的消息让阿涅利家族蒙上一层阴影。目前,埃尔肯已经暂停了在菲亚特集团的全部工作,开始接受戒毒治疗。

【4】班加罗尔（Bangalore）
印度的“硅谷”

【5】TCS 塔塔咨询服务公司
Tata Consultancy Service，简称TCS，是印度著名的企业集团—塔塔集团的控股子公司。
成立于1968年，成立目的是为了通过信息技术来有效解决印度工业中的管理问题。经过近35年的发展，该公司已经成为印度软件业的旗舰。

【6】捷豹路虎——顶级奢华品牌的英国汽车制造商 塔塔旗下

【7】康力斯集团——英国金属公司
是一个国际性金属工业集团，总部设在伦敦，是世界排名第八的钢铁制造商

【8】米塔尔——钢铁公司 印尼 《福布斯》上仅次于比尔盖茨和巴菲特
世界最大的钢铁企业之一，是著名的LNM控股集团和伊斯帕特钢铁集团在2004年10月完成合并后重新命名的。

【9】印孚瑟斯——提供咨询与软件IT服务的印度技术公司 总部位于印度“硅谷”班加罗尔

【10】2000 塔塔茶叶公司收购了比它自身大三倍的英国泰特莱茶叶公司（Tetley Tea）身为旗下钢铁企业Tata Steel董事长的塔塔前不久指挥公司斥资120亿美元收购了规模是其四倍的英-荷钢铁企业Corus，合并后的公司一举成为世界第五大钢铁生产商。

【11】2008印度电信丑闻
印度最高法庭日前要求政府取消多家电信公司在一次违法销售中获得的共122个运营牌照。这次违法销售被认为是印度建国以来最大的腐败丑闻之一。
塔塔集团旗下手机业务部门也在涉嫌以低价获得电信频谱分配一案的名单之列。

【12】寻租
寻租就是寻求经济租金的简称，又称为竞租，是为获得和维持垄断地位从而得到垄断利润（亦即垄断租金）所从事的一种非生产性寻利活动的。
整个寻租活动的全部经济损失要远远超过传统垄断理论中的“纯损”三角形。