A Weekly Digest of The World's Financial Press: Forbes

There is European hostility to US bids to buy up asset-rich companies

A MONTH ago Guy Wyser-Pratte arrived with his wife at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport on a routine business trip from New York. They were stopped at customs by brusque officials who held them for half an hour in a bare room and went through everything in their bags before releasing them without a word of explanation.

Wyser-Pratte can't prove it but he's sure that the search was orchestrated by a politically connected executive at one of the many companies that he's targetted for restructuring in recent years.This much is certain. As head of New York-based Wyser-Pratte & Co with some $500m (pounds 315m) in assets under management to invest in poorly managed companiesGuy Wyser- Pratte is persona non grata in some of Europe's finest drawing rooms.

Wyser-Pratte and other pioneers are beginning to reap big profits by taking minority stakes in asset-rich, poorly managed companies outside the US and forcing management to unlock their hidden values.

- Justin Doebele, staff writer