In the Europe of 1992, it begins to look as if everybody who is anybody will be related to everybody else who counts: cross shareholdings between companies that are fierce competitors have long been a feature of the Japanese and German commercial scenes, but are very much the exception in the US and UK corporate cultures – but with its proposal to merge its power engineering and railway interests with Alsthom SA, the power company controlled by Compagnie Generale d’Electricite SA of Paris in a 50-50 joint venture, GEC Plc will create a company that will be a fierce competitor for Siemens AG in the same field – while on telecommunications it is proposing to create a company with Siemens that will face as its biggest competitor Alcatel NV which is controlled by CGE.