Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
Americans turn their backs, but the Brits back India
By siliconindia
|
Tuesday, 18 December 2007, 02:38 IST
Washington: The United Kingdom and the United States may be joined at the hip in geo-politics, but when it comes to doing business with India, they are parting ways, reported The Times of India.
Britain is embracing Indian companies in several cases where America is often erecting barriers with thinly disguised racist undertones, say some critics.
Two cases are enough to prove this phenomenon. Jaguar car dealers in the U.S. are up-in-arms at the prospective take-over of the luxury brand by Tatas, while British dealers and unions are welcoming it. In the same way, U.S. luxury hotel chain Orient Express is freaked out at the overtures made by Tatas Indian Hotels Ltd, whose oldest offshore property is the St. James Court in London.
And in the most recent instance, the British press has largely welcomed the appointment of Vikram Pandit as CEO of Citigroup even as the U.S. media has viewed it with skepticism.
In the first two cases, the Americans are holding their noses at the prospect of an Indian company taking over a luxury brands, suggesting that India's image as a poor country will not help promote them.
The NYSE-listed Orient Express was equally blunt in rejecting the overtures of Indian Hotels, for pretty much the same reason.
According to one account, Orient-Express CEO Paul White, in a letter to Indian Hotels Vice-Chairman R K Krishna Kumar, said "any association of our luxury brands and properties with your brands and properties would result in a reduction of our brands and of our business and would likely lead to erosion."
Kumar found White's letter so offensive that he told Time that it "will go down as one of the most uncivilized exchanges of views between two companies in the 21st Century," adding that its sentiments reflect "an era that is now prehistoric."
Indian irritation at US skepticism is also beginning to seep into the auto spat, where some of the reactions in the U.S. to the Tata-Jaguar hook-up have been borderline racist.