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Even HSBC, a British bank with a sterling reputation, ingrained prudence and a history of astute acquisitions has stumbled in recent years when entering markets where unfamiliarity prevented it from bringing these traits to bear.
ECONOMIST: Face value
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Its handicaps include corruption, moribund universities, organised crime, socially approved protectionism and a deeply ingrained hostility to competition (when a private rail operator, NTV, launched a new service from Rome's Ostiense station last week, passengers found their path to the trains blocked by a fence put there by a subsidiary of NTV's state-owned competitor).
ECONOMIST: Italians fret that they may end up going the same way as Spain
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Compared with the film-makers of Hollywood, who populate Los Angeles' most venerable cluster, or the metal workers in northern Italy, who have been around for centuries, toytown lacks a distinctive and deeply ingrained collection of skills that make a region's advantage so hard to imitate.
ECONOMIST: The puppet-master of toytown