On the brake
The German auto industry is currently fighting against world politics – and against itself.
“E-tron partner” stands on a sign on the front door of the AudiCar house in the Rhineland. You can not see the “e-tron” here. “At the earliest from mid-March we will get such a car,” says the Audi-Seller.
For test drives, not for sale. Until then he unfortunately has nothing electric in the offer. Could one alternatively look at a hybrid? “Even if you came here with a suitcase with 100,000 euros – I could not sell you a hybrid.” Unfortunately, he has to put off at the end of the year, says the man who wears hedgehog hairstyle to light blue shirt. Only then would the Audi hybrid models return to the market.
No hybrid, no electric. What would the seller recommend for a drive? “I know he has fallen into disrepute. But take a good old diesel. “
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Welcome in the year four after the outbreak of the diesel crisis. In the rhetoric of the three German car companies the internal combustion engine is almost history. Audi has its e-tron drive up a ski slope as one day the Quattro the ski jump. The parent company Volkswagen announced at a Handelsblatt conference that 2026 will end the development of new internal combustion engines.
“Emission-free automobiles are the future,” says the outgoing Daimler-Boss Dieter Zetsche and has specifically created the new sub-brand Mercedes EQ for this electric future of the group. And at BMW Let’s not be deterred by the failure of the two group-owned electric models i3 and i8 and want to offer five by the end of 2021, and at least twelve purely electric models by 2025.
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So much future was rare in the announcement policy of the three German auto companies. And seldom did the present look so bleak.
Because the German car companies have made the transition to the new EU test cycle WLTP, many models are currently not available. Also affected are some of the already rare hybrid variants. In real electric cars it looks even darker.
The delivery of the Audi e-tron should actually begin in December, but still wait the first 15,000 pre-recorded e-tron customers on their vehicles. The first Mercedes EQ can not even preorder. Instead, the corporate showrooms are full of hard to place diesel models.
German carmakers have wasted valuable time
Now revenge that Volkswagen. Daimler and with drawbacks too BMW wasted valuable time after the discovery of the 2015 diesel scandal. Hardly anyone in the corporate headquarters wanted to believe then that the favorite drive technology of the German automaker with the exhaust gas fraud of Volkswagen had suffered an irreparable damage to the image. Stubbornly, the car executives stuck to their favorite drive, repeatedly pointing out that newer diesels easily meet the exhaust emission limits. Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler initially made it easy to ignore the new reality despite diesel fraud. Business was still going strong. Above all, the seemingly unstoppable growth in China spurred the imagination of the corporate strategists.
Only last year, the wind began to turn. A fall in sales of the auto companies in the third quarter of 2018 put the entire German economy in the red – a small reminder of how much the German prosperity of rolling tires and roaring engines depends.
Now also the business in the USA is endangered: US-President Donald Trump has revived the trade conflict with the European Union and threatens Europe’s automakers with import duties of 25 percent. The consequences would be fatal: alone BMW would, according to calculations of the London market researcher ISI Evercore by the tariffs annual profit losses of 1.7 billion euros, that would almost a fifth of the annual surplus.
Daimler would come to two billion, the VW Group even to 2.5 billion euros. “In the worst case, it could happen,” confirms Volkswagen boss Herbert dies this negative forecast. And yet, there are no signs that the diplomatic tensions could lessen in the foreseeable future.
In vain was the Canossagang to Washington, the German car manager Dieter Zetsche, VW boss Herbert Diess and BMW CFO Nicolas Peter had made in December to vote for Trump mild. The fact that the three automobiles even got an appointment at the President’s in person at short notice was still regarded as a sign of reconciliation for the White House. But once again it shows that the only predictable thing about Donald Trump is his unpredictability.
The US tariffs are not the only hotspot. Growth in China is weakening. The Brexit not only threatens the export business to Great Britain, but also the future of the BMW sub-brand Mini produced here. And while the German auto companies are still struggling to meet the CO2 limits that will apply in the EU from 2021, the EU has already raised the bar: By 2030, CO2 fleet emissions are set to fall by another 37.5 percent.
More urgently than ever before, the auto companies needed the support of politics, which they could rely on almost blindly for decades. Whatever in the past was due to environmental discomfort from Brussels, changing federal governments have reliably smashed, abducted or diluted it.
But the steel bond between politics and car lobbying is overstretched. Especially Chancellor Angela Merkel has moved away from the auto industry due to the repeatedly broken promises of the corporations.
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It’s a pretty perfect storm, brewing over German car makers. Daimler has already cut the dividend, BMW announced a profit warning. Audi is cutting shifts in Ingolstadt’s parent plant and every tenth in management.
Now it is a great revenge that the corporations have not used the years of the boom to prepare for the future of the automobile. For too long was set solely on the diesel to move the heavy German prestige vehicles halfway efficient.
In the meantime, a change of thinking has begun in the boardrooms. But in the car dealerships this swing has not arrived yet. Nor, as in the financial markets. Here is the verdict on the German auto companies devastating.
Despite continued high profits and decent dividends, Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen are rated lower on the stock market than their own book value. Investors therefore expect that the auto companies will massively destroy capital in the coming years, or in other words: that they will not escape the perfect storm.
The chief executives of the three German car companies are still in the grip of lying to the pessimistic investors. But it’s a race against the time that is coming. A drama in five acts, the outcome of which decides not only about the future of auto companies. But also about the future of the German economic model, which still depends on the car.
The four automotive companies Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW and Continental represent one third of the total profits of companies listed in the Dax 30. About 7.7 percent of Germany’s total economic output goes directly or indirectly back to car production. Over 800,000 people work in Germany at car manufacturers and suppliers.
Trade war and Brexit: When globalization becomes a trap
If Harald Kruger traveling to the US, then one sentence is quite certain. “South Carolina is our second home,” confesses the BMW boss. From 1993 on, as a young project engineer, he and his foster father Norbert Reithofer set up the Spartanburg plant.
Here in the southern United States, the nation’s former poorhouse, Kruger’s career began. Today, Spartanburg is the largest BMW production site in the world, with almost 450,000 cars a year. Almost all off-road vehicles of the X-series are manufactured here and delivered all over the world.
As an example for the German automotive industry, BMW has radically distributed and networked sales and production across the globe. More than three dozen factories in Germany, South Africa, China and the US form a tight network of subcontracting and manufacturing. Krüger will post about 100 billion euros in sales for the past year, which is almost twice as much as a decade ago. “Our business model is based on free world trade,” Krüger preaches.
This business model is now a source of risk. Example USA: To take office in 2015 Krüger was still hoping for the free trade agreement TTIP. The agreement aimed at lifting all tariffs between the US and the EU, including Britain.
That would have been a blessing, because for every off-road vehicle imported from Spartanburg to Germany, ten percent of the EU import duty is due. Conversely, BMW pays just 2.5 percent for all cars shipped from Germany to the United States. But that adds up, after all, the Munich export 170,000 cars per year from Germany to the United States, including many high-priced sedans. On balance, BMW as well as Daimler and the VW Group would have saved billions with TTIP.
Trump came instead of TTIP. The US president started a trade war with China – with BMW as a victim. For Beijing occupied car imports from the US with 40 percent duty, are also affected the off-road vehicles from Spartanburg. The group has cost 300 million euros so far in the fall of 2018 Kruger had to pronounce the first profit warning for years. That China has suspended the punitive tariffs since January, can hardly comfort Kruger.
Because now it threatens to come very thick: With the classification of European car manufacturers as a “national threat” of the US, the Ministry of Commerce in Washington, the German companies directly targeted. The Trump administration now has 90 days to decide on the threatened 25 percent import tariff.
Whether the tariffs can still be averted? “There is only one person who decides: Donald Trump,” says a representative in Washington. She sounds resigned, as if the troubles of the past few months could have done little.
The European Commission, on the other hand, still has hope that Trump will waive the car duties. The resistance from American industry and Congress is much tougher than it was barely a year ago, when the president imposed protective tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, according to Brussels.
In EU circles is expected that Trump takes some time to think. The deadline ends on 18 May. If he ordered the punitive tariffs, he would probably exclude the EU for a longer period of time, so hope in Brussels, to make room for negotiations on a trade agreement. This is also suggested by Trump’s first comment on the car duties: they are an option especially if one does not agree with the EU on a trade agreement.
From the point of view of Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, it is therefore the best defense strategy to promote ongoing talks with the US government. But if Trump passes new tariffs and does not take out the EU, they will immediately stop the talks and begin retaliating.
US imports into the EU worth 20 billion euros could then be charged high tariffs, warned European Commission Director-General for Trade Jean-Luc Demarty recently. The corresponding, still confidential list is already in Malmström’s drawer. According to reports, many agricultural products can be found in order to position the republican senators from the agrarian states of the Midwest against Trump.
Also Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil wants to fuel the US internal opposition to tariffs when he leaves for the United States on Sunday. Heil: “I’m talking to my counterpart Alexander Acosta, representatives of the auto industry and the United Auto Workers union, to make them clear: For Germany, protectionism is not a response to globalization and digitization.”
For BMW Trump’s customs ultimatum is particularly threatening, because almost at the same time threatens to the US tariffs a hard Brexit. With mini and Rolls-Royce Two out of three corporate brands have their headquarters on the island, which could leave the EU at the end of March without an agreement. For Krüger, who headed the mini-factory near Oxford after his time in Spartanburg, investments worth billions are at stake.
Several times, the BMW managers of the British government, May, have made it clear that a hard Brexit endangers the future of the approximately 10,000 employees in England. But even for BMW would be the sudden exit of the British without a customs deal disaster: Great Britain is after China, the US and Germany, the fourth largest market of Munich.
It is clear: If the hard Brexit, BMW has a hard to calculate problem. If the US punitive tariffs come, then the Munich and the entire German car industry are facing a disaster. For Krüger, who is currently fighting to extend his contract, the next 90 days will be a nerve test.
Electromobility: maneuvers of the last moment
In one corner of the car dealership, the future of Mercedes can be guessed: new black carpet was laid, next to blue-white lines running on the floor, which look like stylized power cables. A pretty charging station with Mercedes star is already ready, even two large blue letters: EQ, the manufacturer’s power label.
An electric car from Mercedes does not exist here. Next to the charging station is just a black Smart. “Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I can offer you electrically,” says the salesman in a black suit, with a white shirt and hair thrown back. “But there will be some models coming soon.”
Next, the EQC will be launched on the market and, this year, various plug-in hybrids. “We’re just in a vacuum right now,” says the salesman. He would recommend a hybrid or a diesel instead. You can currently configure the hybrid variant of the E-Class. “But the delivery time is already there in the third quarter.”
What a prosaic contrast to 4 September 2018! On that day, on the Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche by his own admission “feverishly” like a small child on the Christmas Eve. They turned down the switch, the 65-year-old said back in Stockholm.
The brand with the star will be energized. 16 huge video screens captured every detail as the EQC premiered the first all-electric Mercedes-Benz SUV at Artipelag Art Museum. 600 guests flew the Swabians to the pompous event.
However, more than five months after the presentation of the EQC, customers must continue to be patient. The sporty SUV comes later than originally planned. After four, there is a shortage of battery cells that Daimler buys as well as batteries that the company screwed together on its own.
What as a frontal attack on the California electric car pioneer Tesla was planned, so get used to a “piper”, mocks an investor. In 2019 Mercedes will probably produce just over 20,000 units of the EQC. For comparison: Tesla In the meantime, he has produced such a volume for his Model 3 in less than four weeks.
The stuttering electric offensive from Daimler shows how difficult it is for German automakers to electrify their fleets. “Tesla is technologically two to three years ahead,” states Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, head of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
In the US, the second largest car market in the world, the company sells to the eccentric founder Elon Musk already more Stromer than any other competitor. And even across all powertrains Tesla sets off there most of the top cars in the top price category: The Tesla models S and X beat BMW 7 Series, Mercedes S-Class and Porsche Cayenne.
The German flagship industry stumbles more into the electric era, than that it rolls. The executives in Stuttgart, Munich and Wolfsburg reacted hesitantly and hesitantly to the impending change in drive. Now hurry is required. Strict climate prescriptions from Brussels force companies to take countermeasures.
Analysts believe in a late VW success in electric cars
As a result, the companies now outbid each other in their announcements. Within the next three years alone, the German car industry intends to invest a total of more than 40 billion euros in electricity models. The largest commitment to purely battery-electric drives has made Volkswagen. Wolfsburg will pump more than 30 billion euros into the development and production of electric cars by 2023.
For example, the Wolfsburg converts the three German VW plants in Zwickau, Emden and Hanover at lightning speed from burners to electric drives. The first model of the Electric Vehicle Family ID based on the newly designed power block MEB is scheduled to go into production by 2020. Five years later, the group wants to sell more than one million pure Stromer per year.
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“VW is late in electric mobility, but when the Wolfsburg come, then it can be huge,” said Frank Schwope, an analyst at the NordLB. Daimler and BMW could also catch up on their existing backlog, the capital market expert is convinced.
But the starting position in Stuttgart and Munich is more difficult. For example, the Mercedes EQC is ultimately only a compromise. Man forcing the model makeshift on the vehicle architecture of the burners, is granted even in group circles. Despite a long wait, the model is again only an interim solution.
Daimler’s real electric platform EVA, which is designed solely for Stromer and due to the omitting engine block completely new design and interior designs possible, is still under development. It is not until the end of 2021 that the EQS will benefit the first Mercedes vehicle from the advantages of the electricity package.
In the meantime, the Swabians are using plug-in hybrids, a cross between burners and e-cars to somehow lower the carbon dioxide emissions in the fleet. Most recently, however, Daimler suffered a setback.
In 2018, the CO2 fleet value for passenger cars and vans rose to 134 g / km due to the high demand for gas-guzzling SUVs and the switch to the new WLTP test procedure. In 2017, the value was still 127 grams. Climate protection is different.
From as early as 2021, Mercedes’s new-car fleet will only be able to emit around 105 grams of CO2 per kilometer, otherwise fines will be fatal. In order to meet the limits in the long term, one calculates in Stuttgart, that in 2025 already a quarter of the cars sold purely electric drives.
The Group is investing more than ten billion euros over the next three years. And then it should really start. “The time does not stop in 2022,” says development chief Ola Källenius, who replaces his mentor Zetsche at the head of Daimler in May.
Rival BMW is planning the big attack for 2021. Then the fifth generation of battery cells and electric motors should be finished. Until then, the Munich help themselves with the “mini” and the “X3” in Stromer rework.
After all: Unlike Daimler, BMW can already refer to a considerable number of sold electric cars today. Last year, electrified models accounted for more than six percent of the total sales of 2.1 million vehicles. The lion’s part accounted for plug-in hybrids. By contrast, the company only sold around 35,000 units of the pure Stromer “i3”. Already six years ago, the Munich brought the “i3” on the road.
A real success is the model but not today. Too exotic the design, too expensive the body construction with carbon fiber. The follow-up vehicles should finally bring the breakthrough. Last year alone, BMW invested more than seven billion euros in its development.
China: The engine of growth in the Far East is stuttering
When Volkswagen China invited journalists to a round table discussion in January 2018 to present the plans for the year, then China CEO Jochem Heizmann was still full of confidence. For cutlets and coffee, he predicted that they wanted to grow at least as fast as the overall market. For the whole year, one assumes about four percent, whereby the first quarter will be still the weakest.
But then everything changed. Since July, the heels continue to slide down. Overall, the Chinese new car market shrank by 2.8 percent. With a delivery growth of 0.5 percent, Volkswagen was better than the overall market, but remained well below the self-imposed goals. BMW had to withdraw its profit forecast in September, also because the China business did not go as planned.
“There is a certain restraint among consumers,” says Stephan Wöllenstein, the managing director of Volkswagen China. In the summer, the Chinese real estate market has cooled. At the same time, the bankruptcy of many online platforms, where lenders and borrowers are brought into contact and where about 50 million users are registered, has unsettled the Chinese people.
Alan Kang, an analyst with consulting firm LMC Automotive, expects the downtrend to continue in the first half of 2019. In his estimation, the overall market will at best grow by one percent overall. The fight against financial system risks, debt reduction, a weakening global economy and the uncertainties of the trade war are likely to lead to the slowest economic growth in the People’s Republic in decades.
In addition, the new quotas for vehicles with alternative drive ensure further pressure on the automakers. If you produce or import more than 30,000 conventional vehicles, you must now meet a specific point system. Pure electric cars with a range of more than 300 kilometers bring four times as many points as hybrid drives.
So far, the range of services offered by the German automakers in the electric segment was sparse. Unlike gasoline and diesel vehicles, the market for electric vehicles in China is growing unabated. In January alone, 95,700 such cars were sold in China – whopping 140 percent more than last year. The German manufacturers are currently missing this boom.
Also in this January Volkswagen invited again to a discussion round to discuss the Chinapläne for 2019. There were no cuts this time. “The fate of the Volkswagen Group depends on China,” announced CEO Herbert Diess, who has now taken over the weakening business in China himself.
He wants to double his local time in China, invest more in research and development, and build partnerships with Chinese technology companies. But with concrete forecasts for the China business, Volkswagen held back this time. Relationship to politics: The steel band is overstretched.
On the day of the IAA opening in Frankfurt, the world is still in order, at that time on a Thursday in September 2015. Angela Merkel is the last speaker on the stage. The Chancellor thanks the representatives of the German automotive industry for the efforts of the previous years. The carbon dioxide reduction had been achieved “impressive figures”. Merkel: “I’m looking forward to a nice tour now. Nice to be there. “
They are words that she probably regrets a good day later. And she probably would not have been so readily photographed with VW CEO Martin Winterkorn and Audi CEO Rupert Stadler during their subsequent tour of the fair.
On the evening of the following Friday, the news agencies send an urgent message from the USA: The American environmental authorities impose a so-called “Notice of Violation” against the Volkswagen Group. Volkswagen violated environmental laws and criminally manipulated diesel vehicles sold on the American car market.
These few hours between Angela Merkel’s appearance at the IAA and the “Notice of Violation” the following evening are a key factor that shapes the relationship between politics and German automobile manufacturers to this day.
The Chancellor is deeply annoyed that she was presented by the car managers at the time at the IAA. The Wolfsburg had not warned the Chancellor, although VW had already negotiated at this time for weeks at the highest level with the US authorities in matters of diesel fraud.
“Angela Merkel has not forgotten this until today,” says a Wolfsburg VW manager. The diesel affair has created an alienation between politics and the auto industry, which is even in the business-friendly parties CDU, Christian Social Union and FDP which in previous years had always been on the side of the car companies. Because of this fundamental change, the car lobby in Berlin no longer works according to the usual patterns.
In politics, the lobby no longer penetrates
Matthias Wissmann was President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) until last year. The VDA is Germany’s most important industry association – in it have car manufacturers such as Volkswagen and Daimler and suppliers such as Bosch and Continental together.
Matthias Wissmann himself was a long politician, for instance as Minister of Transport under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. As a result, all doors were open to him as VDA President in Berlin. “Usually a letter to the, Dear Angela ‘,” says an insider.
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This type of lobbying is not working anymore. This is not only because the former Ford Germany boss Bernhard Mattes is now a former car manager instead of an ex-minister at the head of the VDA. “Because of the fundamental societal shifts, even a Matthias Wissmann would have problems today to penetrate his wishes,” it says in association circles.
An example of the problem-laden relationship: Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) spoke in the past year initially against a hardware retrofit for older diesel cars – too expensive, too expensive, too few perceptible success in the reduction of nitrogen oxides in inner cities.
In the end, the minister then changed his attitude and demanded the hardware upgrade from the automotive industry. “He does not want to be perceived as the politician who only fulfills the wishes of car manufacturers,” it says in his Berlin environment.
On the other hand, frustration over the politicians has spread in the auto industry. The fact that the industry hesitates about investing in the construction of cell production for electric cars also has to do with mistrust in politics. “Because maybe we will be forced in a few years, that we suddenly have to build cars with fuel cell propulsion,” speculates a car executive.
Not only in Berlin, the atmospheric changes between politics and car lobbying are clearly noticeable, but also in Brussels. At the end of last year, in Brussels, negotiations were held on the latest limit values valid until 2030. Germany was largely isolated. Even car countries like France and Italy denied the support. Only Hungary – location of three works of German automakers – signaled resistance and sided with Germany.
But that was not enough. In the end, the further cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 37.5 percent was a done deal.
Nevertheless, there is hope in the automotive industry that the pressure on the industry could subside in the near future. However, it is less the politicians that the automakers rely on. The managers hope that citizens will put pressure on politics. “It is seething in the population,” says an industry representative.
The “yellow west” movement in France is a warning example of how the policy with its demands beyond the actually achievable goals. In the end, of all things, an increasing number of diesel driving bans could help the automotive industry, because it will make the protest movement more popular.
So far, it has come with the once-heavily networked industry of the Republic: Inevitably puts them on the pressure of the street instead of on the short line to the Chancellery.
The reorganization: how the corporations want to become more mobile
The auto industry is changing dramatically. The time of the internal combustion engines runs down, the car as status symbol loses meaning. Young people are less and less likely to buy a driver’s license, and if they do, then the purchase of a car has lost its appeal. After all, cars can also be shared in the “sharing economy”.
For too long, the industry has ignored the turnaround. In the meantime, she has switched. By the year 2025 alone, the German manufacturers want to have around 100 different electric models on offer. Especially for Volkswagen, this means a hard-to-manage show of strength. In addition to the costs of developing e-cars and new technologies, the group must shoulder the financial consequences of the diesel affair.
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A few months ago, the top management explored various options for cooperation. The considerations went according to the participants even so far, the Japanese ToyotaGroup to ask for cooperation on hybrid drives.
With the technology that has long been despised in Wolfsburg as a technical gimmick of the Japanese and now the Germans are missing as a bridge from the burner to the pure electric drive. “But that would have been too much for the VW soul,” said a Volkswagen manager. Toyota after all, is still the rival for the title of the world’s largest automaker.
Volkswagen has already entered into a broad alliance with its US competitor Ford. In fields such as autonomous driving and electromobility, companies want to help each other out. In a first step, they will work together on vans and pick-ups. In a next Ford could use the e-platform from VW. “Nobody will be able to do it alone today,” says a high-ranking manager from Volkswagen. For the financial strength act was just too big.
In addition to the new technologies, the automobiles must finally keep the existing production network alive and invest in the improvement of existing technology. VW boss Diess here speaks of conversion costs, which add up to over 100 billion euros.
Mastering the financial double burden is hard enough in itself. The manufacturers are also under time pressure. After all, new competitors are pushing into the business. The most successful of these is certainly the US challenger Tesla, who soon wants to achieve an annual production of 500,000 e-cars. Tesla boss Elon Musk would thus be in the class of Volvo advance.
On the other hand, there are the Internet giants from the US West Coast. Over, Apple and other heavyweights are investing heavily in new mobility services. Google is with his daughter Waymo the furthest in the development of self-driving cars. Waymo could spend about 40 billion euros for the development of new system, Daimler works council chief Michael Brecht has recognized. “We are strong, but in comparison our funds are rather small.”
Too many hierarchies, too little movement
The traditional car makers need urgent mobility – but they have a hard time with it. Audi boss Bram Schot recently complained in the Handelsblatt interview, that his company has too many hierarchies. The same can be heard from the management of Daimler and VW.
To break the deadlock, the companies are rebuilding their structures. VW boss Diess wants to give the individual brands more freedom. “Decisions must also be made on lower levels,” Diess warns in a small circle. Too often topics would be highly scaled up in the board. “That just paralyzes the panel.”
In response to the multiple problems, VW wants its truck division with the brands MAN and Scania released to independence. Even before Easter, the business area under the name Traton be put on the stock market. With this step, the Group is not only splitting off a division that has little in common with the passenger car sector. The flotation flushes VW also much-needed capital in the coffers. The value of Traton should be around 20 billion euros, analysts estimate.
Theme: Automotive industry
Daimler also wants to simplify its structure in order to accelerate and spark new enthusiasm on the capital market. In the future, the company will be transformed into a holding company, under whose roof the fields of cars, trucks and new mobility services can independently operate their business. Subsequent partial listing of the divisions is not excluded.
The extent to which vanities in the industry are on the decline can be seen in a joint venture between BMW and Daimler. Zetsche wants to introduce together with BWM boss Harald Krüger this Friday in Berlin a joint mobility company. The two rivals have merged their car-sharing providers Car2go and DriveNow. The new company could be the nucleus for further offerings in the field of new mobility services.
The industry has woken up. With new products and new structures, the managers of Germany’s most important industry are trying to protect themselves against the perfect storm. But far too long they have watched as the sky above them darkens. It will be a race against time. The outcome of the race is open.
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