Other stocks should be contemplated as long-term plays because of the transaction costs:Your broker must go through an Aussie counterpart, adding overseas commissions and foreign-exchange spreads to the U.S. brokerage fee.
Having the Treasury Department - whose job it is to promote foreign investment in the United States - charged with evaluating such investments is a formula for precisely what we have seen to date: rubber-stamp approval of virtually every transaction, with no regard for the long-term or cumulative impact they will have on U.S. national security equities.
Moreover, shareholders of Bell, the vehicle through which Olivetti was controlled, saw the transaction as an opportunity to make a profit quickly, rather than as a long-term industrial investment.