Abstract EN:

International competition (particularly in terms of concentration), after being accentuated by european integration, as much influences, not to say more, public-owned corporations as their private counterparts, which entails numerous similarities in their respective behaviours. However, in reaction to this movement of mergers and acquisitions, public-owned corporations have not escaped the trend in the community, in spite of the constraints attached to the difficult opening of their capital and the rationing of budgetary financing that is to be seen everywhere. On the market for corporate control, the situation of public enterpri ses does not appear as basically unfavourable. Indeed, the threat of a takeover bid exists mainly for the corporations whose management develops the typical flaws of the managerial firms and whose capital is widely spread among the public. On the other hand, the community regulations seem to penalize public-owned corporations since they tend to normalize the m in both acknowledging the legal value of their existence while denying their behaviour any economic specificity, in comparison with the norm that the economic firl would stand for. Actually, it contributes above all to reinforcing their autonomy from the supervision of their state. An overall trend of privatization, if not of the capital, at least of the behaviour and the gestion, together with international strategi es of maximization of size, has been noticeable since the mid eighties among numerous corporations in the community.