把事业当成买卖，“英国华为”是怎么垮掉的_风闻

英国《卫报》5月8日刊登专栏作者、高级评论员阿迪亚·查克拉博迪文章《为什么英国没有华为》

文：Aditya Chakrabortty

译：杨瑞赓

你很可能已经对中国的华为公司有了相当多的了解。这家中国巨头是世界上最具争议的公司之一。安全专家们（也就是一般被我们当作偏执狂的那些人）警告称，中国的电信设备可能会被北京方面用来监视我们。英国首相特蕾莎·梅的许多内阁同僚们央求她把这家中国公司远远挡在英国5G网络市场之外，但梅首相并没有理睬那些人。一位或几位高级部长可能太急于表达他们对国家安全的担忧，甚至因此泄露了会议的细节，这反而危害了英国的国家安全。

所以，你完全可以猜到，当特朗普政府的国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥5月8日会见英国首相特蕾莎·梅及其外交部长杰里米·亨特时发生了什么。在关于王室添丁的寒暄结束后，美国第一件做的事就是警告唐宁街10号，称华为对英国人隐私构成了威胁，并重申如果英国不听话，作为报复华盛顿方面可能会把伦敦方面排除在情报网络之外。

或许你还记得揭发美国国安局的爱德华·斯诺登以及他披露的种种大规模监控内幕。或许你惊讶于英国保守党政府被卷入不断升级的中美贸易战的不幸。华为使我们想到的问题太多太多，然而其中最关键的问题我还没看到有人提出过。那就是——英国自己的华为在哪里？

英国作为全球最发达的经济体之一，本国竟然没有一家大型电信设备制造商，以至于不得不从华为——据美国联邦调查局称该公司与中共和中国军方都有密切联系——那里购买重要电信设备。这种事情到底是怎么发生的？

答案是，英国曾经有过一家这样的公司。它曾是世界上最大、最著名的工业企业之一。从它被消灭至今也不过10多年时间，可以说这篇文章的读者都经历过那个年代。这家公司便是英国通用电气公司（General Electric Company，简称GEC）。读懂GEC如何走向灭亡的故事，便能理解英国目前面临的大部分混乱情况。

上世纪80年代初，处于鼎盛时期的GEC根本不是一家公司，而是一个由180家不同公司组成的帝国，总共雇佣了约25万名员工。它的产品从X光机到船舶应有尽有，在电信和国防电子领域占有巨大的市场份额。自从1963年执掌公司以来，董事总经理阿诺德·温斯托克在30年时间里，把GEC打造成了一个庞然巨兽，确立了自己作为战后英国头号实业家的地位。

作为波兰犹太移民的儿子，温斯托克从未真正融入到英国建制派权势集团当中。众所周知，他在公司里热衷于削减成本，却不善于人事管理，只有培育赛马和参观米兰的斯卡拉歌剧院才能真正让他焕发神采。参观GEC公司梅菲尔总部的记者们发现，温斯托克的地毯已经磨秃，墙上的油漆也开始剥落。一位经常与大企业高管推杯换盏的《经济学人》记者在做客GEC后抱怨说：“GEC公司连杯水都不给客人倒”。

《经济学人》杂志的那篇文章题目叫作《最迟钝的美德》，它总结了人们对GEC老板和企业本身的看法：稳步盈利，但谨小慎微，在上世纪80年代做着狂飙增长梦的英国，这种风格显得很不入时。首相玛格丽特·撒切尔并不喜欢温斯托克，她更青睐被人们戏称为“钱袋勋爵”的詹姆斯·汉森，后者以善于打劫其他企业的资产而闻名。去监管化之后，伦敦金融城银行家们根本看不上GEC公司分布广泛却单调乏味的业务，它们与强调“小而专”的时代显得格格不入，而温斯托克本人那种腼腆的气质也受到严重的鄙视。

伦敦金融城那些穿细条纹西服的银行家们的嘲笑或许刺激到了温斯托克。尽管他争辩称“我们不是一家负责提供兴奋感的公司”，他也开始逐渐沉浸在80年代的商业文化里——所谓“一个东西只要能动，买下来就不亏”。学者们发现，GEC公司在1988年至1998年间至少进行了79次“重大重组活动”，包括收购、出售业务部门或成立合资公司。不过，所有事情真正变得一团糟，还是在1996年温斯托克辞职以后。接替他的是一位名叫乔治·辛普森的会计师，《卫报》曾批评他“出卖路虎给德国人”。新任财务总监约翰·梅奥来自温斯托克厌恶的商业银行界。两人看到前任积攒下来的巨额现金，于是开始着手花钱。

他们卖掉旧业务，收购新业务，公司寒酸气一扫而空，处处闪耀着兴奋点。仅在1999-2000财年，它就从美国到澳大利亚至少收购了15家公司。突然之间，由GEC电信业务重组而成的马可尼通信公司深受银行家和媒体人的喜爱，因为前者能拿到交易提成，后者能获得头条新闻的素材。

然后，互联网泡沫破裂，新收购的业务每况愈下。这家原本股价达到12.5英镑的公司现在每股仅值4便士。在21世纪头10年的中期，马可尼最重要的客户英国电信放弃了马可尼，转而开始使用华为的设备。尽管马可尼公司死掉时，温斯托克已经离开人世，但他人生最后阶段曾公开表示：“我想把辛普森和梅奥吊到一棵大树上，让他们在那里荡很长一段时间。”

两个管理层之间不是天才与傻子的差别，更不是善良与邪恶的差别。温斯托克并不像表面上那么迟钝，他也不是没有犯错误。但“英国华为”的衰落是英国近几十年来最重要的事件之一，它凸显了两种商业文化之间的冲突。一方面是温斯托克，他用几十年时间里建立了一整套体系；另一方面是辛普森和梅奥热衷的精明交易，为了给了股东们分快钱，他们沉溺在季度报表的小数据里不可自拔。

GEC走的这条路也是英国帝国化工（Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.）等家喻户晓的公司所走的路，同时也是英国这个国家所选择的道路。这个国家的政治阶层既不关心国家的工业巨头、老牌银行或舰队街的报社掌握在谁手里，也不在乎这些机构的掌门人会带领它们走向何方。这就是我们今天的资本主义被菲利普·格林式（注：菲利普·格林是零售业巨头，创下英国商业史上赚钱最快的纪录）人品欠佳、一夜暴富的商人主导的原因。

谢菲尔德大学负责创新的副校长理查德·琼斯指出，GEC和ICI等英国公司过去曾大规模投资研发。如今，英国在研发领域不仅被所有主要西方竞争对手超越，就连人均GDP远低于英国的中国，其研发投入也要高于英国。

如今，英国人对詹姆斯·戴森这样的商人大加赞赏，他们的大部分产品都是在亚洲生产的。结果就是，我们只能等着其他国家来收购我们的资产。甚至在电信设备这种相对简单的东西上，我们都身不由己地被拖入其他国家的战略冲突中去。 

Why doesn’t Britain have a Huawei of its own?

Chances are that you have learned rather a lot about Huawei. That the Chinese giant is one of the world’s most controversial companies. That security experts, those people we pay to be paranoid on our behalf, warn its telecoms kit could be used by Beijing to spy on us. That Theresa May was begged by cabinet colleagues to keep the firm well away from our 5G network – yet ignored them. And that one or more senior ministers were so eager to prove their concern for national security that they leaked details of their meeting, thus breaching national security.

So you can already guess what will happen when Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, meets May and her foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Wednesday. Once the pleasantries about Harry and Meghan’s baby are over, top of America’s agenda will be to warn No 10 of the threat Huawei poses to British privacy – and to restate that Washington may retaliate by freezing London out of its intelligence network.

Maybe you recall whistleblower Edward Snowden and his revelations, published in this paper, about how US surveillance services are themselves harvesting millions of people’s phone calls and internet usage. Or possibly you are too busy gasping at the haplessness with which a Conservative-run government has allowed itself to be dragged into an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing. Many are the questions raised by this affair, but among the largest is one I have not seen asked. Namely, where is Britain’s Huawei? How does one of the world’s most advanced economies end up without any major telecoms equipment maker of its own, and having to buy the vital stuff from a company that enjoys, according to the FBI, strong links with both the Chinese Communist party and the People’s Liberation Army?

Well, the answer is that the UK did have one. It was one of the largest and most famous industrial companies in the world. And it was finally killed off within the lifetime of every person reading this article, just over a decade ago. It was called the General Electric Company, or GEC, and the story of how it came to die explains and illuminates much of the mess the country is in today.

At its height, in the early 80s, GEC was not a company at all. It was an empire comprising around 180 different firms and employing about 250,000 people. It built everything from x-ray machines to ships, and it was huge in telecoms and defence electronics. At the helm was Arnold Weinstock, who took the reins in 1963 and spent the next three decades building it into a colossus, securing his place as postwar Britain’s most renowned industrialist.

The son of Jewish Polish immigrants, Weinstock never quite slotted into his role in the British establishment. He was known to be fanatical about cost-cutting, terrible at managing people, and only really lit up by breeding racehorses and visiting Milan’s La Scala opera house. Journalists visiting his Mayfair headquarters found the carpet threadbare and the paint peeling off the walls. A correspondent for the Economist more used to convivial three-bottle lunches with captains of industry came away complaining that GEC’s guests “have never been known to receive so much as a glass of water”.

That Economist profile was headlined Lord of Dullest Virtue, which sums up how both boss and business were seen: steadily profitable yet cautious and utterly unfashionable in the Britain of the 80s, which fancied a turbocharge. Weinstock went unloved by Margaret Thatcher, who preferred the corporate-raiding asset-stripper James Hanson (or Lord Moneybags, as he was dubbed). The post-Big Bang City bankers glanced at GEC’s vast spread of unglamorous businesses, out of step in an era of specialisation, and its shy boss better suited to a Rhineland boardroom – and buried both in plump-vowelled disdain.

Perhaps the pinstriped jeering got to Weinstock. Even as he protested “we’re not a company to render excitement”, he too began indulging in the 1980s business culture of “if it moves, buy it”. Between 1988 and 1998, academics found that GEC did no fewer than 79 “major restructuring events”: buying or selling units, or setting up joint ventures. But it was after Weinstock stepped down in 1996 that all hell broke loose. His replacement was an accountant, George Simpson, who had made his name, as the Guardian sniffed, “selling Rover to the Germans”. The new finance director, John Mayo, came from the merchant-banking world detested by Weinstock. Together the two men looked at the giant cash pile salted away by their predecessor – and set about spending it, and then some.

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They sold the old businesses and bought shiny new ones; they flogged off dowdy and snapped up exciting. In just one financial year, 1999-2000, they bought no fewer than 15 companies, from America to Australia. Suddenly, GEC – or Marconi, as the rump was rebranded – was beloved by the bankers, who marvelled at the commissions coming their way, and the reporters, who had headlines to write.

Then came the dotcom bust, and the new purchases went south. A company that had been trading at £12.50 a share was now worth only four pence a pop. In the mid-2000s, Marconi’s most vital client, BT, passed it over for a contract that went instead to … Huawei. Weinstock didn’t live to see the death of his beloved firm but among his last reported remarks was: “I’d like to string [Simpson and Mayo] up from a high tree and let them swing there for a long time.”

This is not a story about genius versus idiocy, let alone good against evil. Weinstock was not quite as dull as made out, nor did he avoid all errors. But it is one of the most important episodes in recent British history – because it highlights the clash between two business cultures. On the one hand is Weinstock, building an institution over decades; on the other is the frenetic wheeler-dealing of Simpson and Mayo, mesmerised by quarterly figures and handing shareholders a fast buck. The road GEC took is the one also taken by ICI and other household names. It is also the one opted for by Britain as a whole, whose political class decided it cared neither who owned our industrial giants or venerable banks or Fleet Street newspapers, nor what they did with them. That is why our capitalism is today dominated by unsavoury, get-rich-quick merchants in the Philip Green mould.

Firms such as GEC and ICI used to invest heavily in research and development, notes Sheffield University’s pro-vice-chancellor for innovation, Richard Jones. Now the UK has been overtaken in R&D by all major western competitors. Even China, a vastly poorer economy in terms of GDP per capita, is more research-intensive than the UK.

Now Britons laud businessmen such as James Dyson who make most of their stuff in Asia. As a result, we rely on the rest of the world to come here and buy our assets. And even on something as relatively simple as telecoms equipment, we can’t help but be pulled into other countries’ strategic battles.

(End)