The price of pride

Nowadays bosses rarely acknowledge any motive other than shareholder value when they make acquisitions. Ratan Tata, chairman of India’s Tata Group which last week acquired Corus in a heated £6.7bn auction, has made an exception. «We all felt that to lose... would be an issue of great disappointment in the country, « he told the FT. Mr Tata is now a national hero. Corus is not just India’s largest foreign acquisition by a long way. The company, one of whose ancestors was the old British Steel, w...