Many of the companies were small, weak and in debt.
VOA: special.2009.10.09
Countries like to influence their neighbors, and large and powerful countries that are surrounded by smallandweak countries are usually capable of doing this.
But it risks reinforcing the rift between an assembly that is perceived as representing poor, smallandweak countries, and a council on which powerful, or once-powerful, countries have a disproportionate say.