Curs 3- Markets and competition

Types of markets
A market can be defined as a place where buyers and sellers of goods or services carry
out transactions, sometimes through an intermediary and also as the whole group of potential
buyers for a good or service (FT Lexicon). The term can be used as a head of a very large
number of noun phrases to indicate various types of markets, for example: black market (piata
neagra), commodity market (piata materiilor prime), domestic market (piata interna), export
market (piata a exporturilor), financial market (piata financiara), free market (piata libera),
global market (piata globala), housing market (piata imobiliara), single market (piata unica).
On the other hand, market can be used as a modifier in phrases headed by nouns referring to
different economic concepts: market economy (economie de piata), market player (jucator pe
piata) or a company or financial institution involved in a particular market, market share (cota
de piata) or the percentage of total sales (volume or revenue) claimed by a supplier in a
particular market, market mechanisms (mecanisme ale pietei), market price (pret curent de
piata). The examples below illustrate some of these uses:
1. With a market share above 37 per cent, Carlsberg is still in a very strong position in
Russia.(FT)
2. Market mechanisms can be employed to achieve these goals (The Economist, 23
April 2005);
3. they would have to use market mechanisms to ensure flexibility and efficiency.
(The Economist, 10 Dec. 2005);
4. Key European achievements such as the single market, border-free travel and co-
operation on foreign policy preceded the single currency and they can survive its
demise...(FT, 7 November 2011)
The adjectives used to describe markets in general include open, closed, volatile and
buoyant. Thus, a closed market (piata inchisa) is one which does not allow the entry of foreign
competitors, while an open market (piata deschisa) is freely accessible to buyers and sellers. A
volatile market (piata volatile) is a market in which prices are changing rapidly and by a large
amount, while a buoyant market (piata activa) or economy is successful, has a lot of trading
activity, and prices are rising rather than falling.
While the notion of market volatility/ price volatility (volatilitate) parallels the behaviour
of these economic concepts to that of gas, starting from the literal meaning of buoyant as
capable of floating, a buoyant market or economy evokes thoughts of the economy as a vessel
on the ocean. The latter acceptation provides a series of mappings between the two domains (the
economy and a ship on the ocean) that may sometimes have ideological implications (Charteris-
Black, 2000). Thus, the captain of the ship is usually the president of the central bank, the crew
his team, the sea is the socio-economic environment, the destination of the voyage the economic
strategic objectives, the ship the economy. Most of the times this can be steered according to the
plans of those on board and by using various instruments (maps, anchors), although at times of
distress, when factors outside human control become overwhelming, there is the possibility of a
shipwreck, or the idea of a huge world of uncertainty that makes any clear destination
impossible. Many elements of the vocabulary used to describe this watery picture are now part of
the economic jargon and are no longer perceived as metaphorical: buoyant demand, floating
exchange rates, floatation, liquidity, liquid assets, flows, circulation, leakages, waves, monetary
anchor, sinking fund, etc. While Romanian shows the same linguistic landscape, with terms such
as flotare, lichiditate, lichid(e), fluxuri, cash-flows, circulatie, injectii etc, in some cases the
metaphor of the economy as a ship on the ocean is not so obvious: buoyant finds an equivalent in
activ(a), in crestere, floating is rendered as liber, while cash flow has been borrowed and
co-exists with the domestic flux de numerar. The following examples provide further evidence
for the conceptualization of the economy as a ship/the ocean:
1. During the volatile market last week, the FTSE 100 index was lower than 12 months ago
(FT, 19 August 20110
2. Italian banks gyrated in a volatile market on Wednesday, with early falls giving way to
gains, before a slide again in late trading. (FT, 3 August 2011)
3. A buoyant economy should push up profits and dividends (The Economist, 12 Feb.
2005)
4. both exports and domestic demand were buoyant (The Economist, 15 Oct. 2005)
5. Yahoo! Found the advertising market unexpectedly buoyant. (23 April 2005);
6. A fully floating exchange rate may not be desirable because it may be too volatile, but
more flexibility could help oil exports to adjust better to fluctuation in commodity
prices. (The Economist, 12 Nov. 2005)
7. They have poured money into wasteful infrastructure projects to keep broken state-
owned enterprises afloat. (The Economist, 29 Oct. 2005);
8. And although prices fell a bit, they did not plunge (The Economist, 17 Dec. 2005);
9. This both makes it easier for the Bank of England to steer the economy, (...) (The
Economist, 25 March 2005);
10. The unemployment rate (...) will sink to 10.4 in 2006 (The Economist, 7 May 2005)
11. While energy traders have been interested in uranium for years, it has been a
relatively closed market for investors.(FT, 25 March 2010)
12. The recent mild appreciation of the renminbi may not continue because it is subject
to volatile market movements.(FT, 6 October 2011)
13. IPO reached a nadir earlier this summer, as the company delayed a planned offering in September
amid a sharp increase in market volatility and investor fears. (FT, 4 November 2011)

When a market is tapped, it is accessed or drawn upon:

14. Earlier this year there was speculation the company intended to tap the market for
development funds.(FT, 19 July 2011)
15. smaller institutions and those from weaker economies such as Spain and Portugal are
still struggling to tap the market at prices that make economic sense. (FT, 20 February
2011)
Sometimes, people on the market or markets themselves are invested with the image as
well as the attributes of animals. Thus, the stock market is inhabited by two well-known
metaphorical animals the bull, and the bear, but also by other fauna such as stags, cats or
rats. While all of these words are established technical terms in the stock exchange jargon,
referring to different types of speculative actions in trading, the first two have had a long history
which stretches back to the 18th century, and have given rise to compounds such as bull run, bull
position, bear run, bear trap, bear raid, bear squeeze, bullish market, bearish market, etc.
Talking about these two concepts, Smith (1995) notes:
These creatures have been in existence for a long time, and the Oxford English
Dictionary notes that the word bear was in use in the early eighteenth century, and
common around the time of the great speculative frenzy known as the South Sea Bubble.
The origin of the term bear is probably connected to the proverb to sell the bearskin
before one has caught the bear. A bear is now understood as a person who predicts a fall
in the price of stocks, but originally it appears to have referred to the stocks themselves, as
in the phrase "to sell the bear . This would nowadays be referred to as "selling short",
whereby brokers sell and obtain settlement for stocks they do not actually possess in the
expectation that the price will fall and they will then make a profit on the transaction.
Manipulating markets by heavy short selling to bring about falls in prices is sometimes
referred to as a bear trap, which is usually illegal. The bull apparently appeared later than
the bear, also during the eighteenth century, and probably as a metaphorical foil for the
bear. Bulls are optimistic, predicting that stocks will rise in price. (1995: 47)
A bear is defined as an investor who expects share prices to fall while a bull is someone who
expects share prices to rise. If pessimism pervades a market, you would describe the sentiment
as bearish, the opposite of bullish. A bear market is a financial market in which prices are
falling, especially over a long period of time, while a bull market is one in which prices are
rising.
16. The German stock market entered bear market territory last month, falling 32.6 per cent
by mid-September...(18 October 2011, FT)
17. The popular definition of a bear market is a 20 per cent share price fall. (12 October
2011, FT)
18. Wall Street entered a bear market on Tuesday (4 October 2011, FT)
19. Global equities slipped into a bear market in the aftermath of the Fed move (23
September 2011, FT)

Romanian uses synonyms like n cretere/n scdere, pozitiv/negativ in order to refer to

these concepts, and has recently borrowed the English bullish and bearish as technical,
conventional terms. However, in English the metaphor has preserved its force of generating
novel and figurative language, by accessing the semantic field surrounding the two terms, and
transferring many of the behavioural characteristics of these animals upon the market, whereas in
Romanian these associations are absent. Thus, English market reports abounds in expressions
such as Yesterdays 200 points crash through the 9,600 mark delivered the market into the jaws
of the bear, The sleeping bear has been woken, and there is no sign that he is heading back to
hibernate., 10,000-mark red cape as bulls paw the ground (examples due to Smith, 1995)
whereas in Romanian, synonyms meant to explain the newly entered terms are chosen from
mathematics (pozitiv/negativ) or from the field of organic growth (n cretere/n scdere).
20. Piaa romneasc este i va rmne bullish(Capital, 06/2005)
21. indicele rmne negativ (bearish) (14/2005)
 22. (...) care n aceast poziie constituie un element pozitiv/bullish de schimbare de trend
(45/2005)

This conceptual difference between the two languages might be explained in terms of
differing cultural conditions surrounding their creation: in the Anglo-Saxon space, more
precisely in England, the stock exchange has had a history of several hundred years, being a
well-established institution, with a rich and well-established jargon, and with a considerable
impact on the life of the civil society at large. In Romania this picture is very different: the stock
exchange does not have the same cultural significance and is far less developed, a fact which is
reflected at a linguistic level, too, in the scarcity of specialized terms used to speak about it.

Types of companies
While the metaphor of the economy as an organism provides a set of underlying
correspondences that allow us to view the economy as a whole (see course 1), the analogies
found in family relationships can be used in order to describe different types of companies:
parent/daughter/sister company- companie mam/sor/fiic. These are technical terms in both
English and Romanian, being recorded in specialized dictionaries.
23. FDI into the euro area's largest economies suffered, partly due to the large loan
repayments made by foreign affiliates to their parent firms. (The Economist, 1 Oct.
2005)
24. The Eonomist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, forecasts
continuing growth in FDI (The Economist, 29 Oct. 2005)
Companies may also occupy different positions as regards their importance in the market.
Thus, the company with the biggest market share is called the market leader in or for a given
type of product or service, the second-biggest company in the industry is the market challenger,
while the smaller companies are market followers.
25. As market leader in UK clothing, M&S is amongst the most exposed to the tough
trading conditions we are seeing in UK apparel,(FT, 1 November 2011)
26. MAN has become market leader for medium and heavy trucks in Brazil after buying the
truck operations from its shareholder Volkswagen two years ago.(28 October 2011)
A start-up is a company that has just been formed, while an established company is an
older and better-known one. Markets may be dominated by one or several companies, but they
may also be attacked (when a company starts selling in a market for the first time), defended
(when existing market players try to prevent competitors from being successful in it) or even
invaded. Similarly, companies may establish a foothold/ toehold in the market (occupy a small
part of it first in preparation for gaining a larger part) or withdraw from it (stop selling in it).
Competition
Competition may be defined as a situation in which businesses are trying to be more successful
than others by selling more goods and services and making more profit, but also as all the
businesses that compete with a particular business, seen as a group (FT Lexicon). Companies
may compete in a market, for customers, market share, etc, on a certain product or product
feature, and with or against each other. Sometimes, they compete head-to-head, meaning
directly.
27. Countries will then be free to compete for investment on the far more transparent basis
of tax rates, and tax collectors will be better equipped to spot potential abuses...(26
September 2011)
28. production costs, which have been compounded by the soaring value of the yen, have
made it difficult for Japanese companies to compete with South Korean and Taiwanese
rivals. (4 November 2011)
29. We compete against much bigger players than ourselves and we have to provide people
with something that makes us an attractive alternative...(7 November 2011)
30. Domestic carmakers AvtoVAZ and GAZ already struggle to compete against foreign
players. (3 November 2011, FT)
31. Japanese manufacturers will be forced to shift even more production overseas to counter
the yen strength and better compete against foreign manufacturers. (24 October 2011,
FT)
32. South Korea and Japan compete head-to-head in electronics, autos and shipbuilding. (29
September 2011, FT)
33. Then the pair consulted an analyst to find a selling price that covered costs but could
compete in a cut-throat market. (31 October 2011, FT0
34. before he ever considered running for president, the most daunting challenge facing
Herman Cain was figuring out how to compete in the pizza home-delivery market.(7
October 2011)
35. In America we can compete on quality and also technology, while costs are not as much
of an issue as people might think,(6 October 2011, FT)
36. Although the two compete on handsets, Samsung is also a core supplier of chips to
Apple. (5 October 2011, FT)
37. retailers will continue to compete on price. (FT, 25 August 2011)
Two nouns and two adjectives have been formed from the verb to compete, i.e. competition and
competitor, and competing, competitive respectively. Competition from other companies may be
fair (loiala) or unfair (neloiala), and organisations and governments have to ensure, promote and
enforce the former type, while protecting or defending businesses from the latter.
38. We want to ensure two things: that there will be fair competition but also that we will
not hurt businesses. Businesspeople lead the economy and produce the main added value
of the economy...(19 September 2011, FT)
39. Western groups complain of unfair competition, in the allocation of government
contracts for example, of a lack of transparency and of intellectual property...(10 October
2011, FT)
40. To cope with the economic downturn, Mr Collins has restructured the resort and shed
jobs. But he says he faces unfair competition from Nama, which he claims is using
taxpayers money to keep golf clubs with massive debts afloat.(21 September 2011)
 41. policies that guarantee no macroeconomic volatility, the defence of the domestic market,
protection from unfair competition and which defend the sovereignty of national
businesses.(14 July 2011, FT)
More generally speaking, companies, or entire regions and countries may face intense, stiff,
tough, fierce, cut-throat (concurenta acerba, puternica) or conversely reduced competition for a
certain good or service.
42. Pakistans top business leaders, far from fearing cut-throat competition from Indian
goods, see opportunities in exporting cement, engineering products, food products and
banking services...(8 November 2011)
43. China's domestic consumer software market suffers from cut-throat competition, and
Tencent and 360 have been accusing each other of unfair behaviour.(29 October 2011,
FT)
44. Fierce competition for jobs and funding, along with an academic culture of publish or
perish, often inhibit the sharing...(28 October 2011)
45. However, Fiat faces intense competition in Europe, even for its traditional forte of very
small cars, where Volkswagen last month premiered its well reviewed...(25 October 2011,
FT)
46. The region also faces stiff competition for foreign investment from the Republic of
Ireland, which has one of Europes lowest corporate tax rates: 12.5 per.(2 November
2011, FT)
A competitor is a person, product, company, country etc that is competing with another (FT
Lexicon). Competitors may be strong, or one may speak of a companys main competitor.
47. After the deal is completed, C&C said it would have a 20 per cent share of the US
market, half that of its main global competitor, Heineken, which distributes brands
including Strongbow. (8 November 2011, FT)
48. He launched Kingfisher Airlines, billed as a competitor to the worlds premium carriers,
in 2005. (13 October 2011, FT)
49. The project is widely seen as competitor to the European Union-backed plan to build a
network of gas pipelines (16 September 2011)
50. The proposed merger would remove a strong competitor from the market and would
give the new company by far the leading position in derivatives trading in Europe (9
August 2011)
51. Brasil Foods, the worlds biggest poultry exporter, has won antitrust approval for a
merger with its main competitor, Sadia, but must suspend one of its main brands and
sell some assets. (13 July 2011)
52. TomTom has also been hit by aggressive pricing from Garmin, its main competitor. (28
June 2011)
53. they retained workers because they offered an incentive not to seek higher pay at a
competing company. (19 May 2006, FT)
54. Even competitor countries such as France, New Zealand and Australia are buying more
South African produce. (14 July 2010)

Competition between companies is generally viewed in terms of war, involving physical

violence, attacks, battles and bloodsheds. In this context, mergers and takeovers are conceptually
structured in terms of a marriage, involving such stages as courtship, wooing, suitors, rivals,
brides and grooms, weddings and divorces, etc. It has often been pointed out that the rise of
globalization and of multinational firms has had as a consequence the enforcement of the concept
of the fight for survival, which resulted in the conceptualization of the global market as a
battlefield, in which only the strongest and the fittest survives, where the protagonists attack and
retreat as their fortune changes, waging conflicts that require both physical force and
psychological fortitude (Bratoz, 2004). Besides having been conventionalized in such technical
terms as trade war/ rzboi comercial, price war/ rzboi al preurilor, trade barriers/ bariere
comerciale, protectionism/ protecionism, protective tariffs/ tarife protective, hedging/hedging,
hostile takeover/preluare ostil, rival/rival, predator/predator/ invadator, raid/atac the
metaphor of competition as war is continually generating figurative language that needs a proper
context for interpretation.
55. But the textile giant (...) could not fight off cheap imports. (The Economist, 23 April
2005)
56. The internet was supposed to batter traditional retailers. Instead they are coming to
dominate it. (The Economist, 3 Dec. 2005)
57. Quinlan Private last year beat off rivals to buy four of Londons grandest hotels (The
Economist, 23 April 2005);
58. Samsung and Motorola are locked in a battle for the industrys number two position.
(The Economist, 12 Feb. 2005)

Protectionism
Protectionism can be defined as the use of tariff and non-tariff restrictions (restrictii
tarifare si non-tarifare) on imports to protect domestic producers from foreign competition,
while protective taxes and other measures are designed to protect an industry from foreign
competition. A tariff is a tax levied on certain imports, either to raise revenue or to protect
domestic goods from foreign competition. In this context, a trade/ price/ sales war (razboi
commercial, razboi al preturilor, razboi al vanzarilor) is a situation in which countries or
companies compete against each other very strongly. One or several companies/ countries may
start, spark, ignite, engage in or fight such a war.
59. HP has been fighting a disastrous price war with Dell (The Economist, 12 Feb. 2006)
60. America went to the brink of a trade war with European Union (The Economist, 3 Dec.
2005)

A trade barrier or a barrier to trade (bariera comerciala) is a government-imposed restriction

on trade with other countries, typically used to protect domestic producers. Trade barriers may
be raised, put up or imposed, or conversely they may be removed, lifted, dismantled or lowered,
and they may be high or low.

61. Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, and vice-premier Wu Yi, Chinas top trade
official, each criticised the other for threatening to raise trade barriers.
 62. Nevertheless, this week leaders of the 10 members of the Association of South-east Asian
Nations agreed to remove trade barriers by 2015 to create a European Union-style
economic community.(FT, 22 November 2011)
63. The move to grant India MFN status is part of a broader set of measures designed to lift
some of the barriers to trade with India, including plans to make it easier for Indian
businessmen to obtain Pakistani visas.
64. With much of the developed world facing the likelihood of renewed recession and with
protectionism rising among important trading partners, the days of ever-growing exports
are nearly over.(FT, 25 October 2011)
65. their research concluded that if a poor country has high trade barriers, a misaligned
exchange rate, unstable prices and weak public finances, it is infertile soil for aid

Takeovers

A special situation is presented in this context by the language of takeovers. A takeover

(preluare) is defined as the acquisition of a majority or controlling interest in a company,
normally through the purchase of shares (FT Lexicon). A majority stake or interest (participare
majoritara) is a shareholding of more than half of a company's shares, or enough shares to
control the company. A company may take over, acquire or buy out another company. A
takeover may be friendly (amiabila) when it is agreed to by the management of the company
being acquired, or hostile (ostila) when it is not supported by the management of the company
being acquired. A takeover bid (oferta de preluare) is an offer by one company to buy another,
or the value of this offer (LBED), while the bidder is the company making the bid.

66. Lactalis, the French dairy group, on Tuesday launched a takeover bid worth 3.4bn
($4.9bn) for the rest of Parmalat, its Italian rival. (FT, 26 April 2011)
67. Cain became an executive at the Pillsbury food conglomerate and bought out one of its
divisions, Godfathers Pizza. (FT, 28 October 2011)
68. Air France-KLM last night pulled out of takeover talks with Italian unions representing
Alitalia (FT, 3 April 2008)

Legendary figures inhabit this particular economic battlefield, conveying clear indications of
the stereotypical division between good and evil: giants, white knights i.e. someone who buys
shares in a company to prevent another company taking it over completely (LBED), black
knights or companies that try to take over another company by offering to buy a large number
of its shares (LBED). A raid (atac) is an occasion when someone suddenly buys a lot of shares
in a company, usually as part of an attempt to take control of it while a predator is a company
which takes advantage of another company weaker than itself, for example by trying to buy it.
Similarly predatory pricing is the setting of an artificially low price for a product in order to
drive away competition. This kind of black or white reduction tends to present the economic
phenomena in an over-simplified and misleading manner, but it is a useful instrument in the
conceptualization of a complex reality.
 69. White knights, suitors, raiding parties, poison pills-the mergers and acquisitions
(M&A) boom is in full swing. (The Economist, 8 April 2006)
70. So the idea that China is some sort of white knight here is very far from the truth. China
is acting in its own best interests.(FT, 13 September 2011)
71. Actelions chief executive and Robert Cawthorn, its chairman, dismissed market talk that
they were looking for a white knight to take a minority stake to preserve the companys
independence. (FT, 13 December 2010)

Mergers
Another important event on the economic scene, and one that has developed a specific
jargon is the merger. A merger can be defined as the combination of two (or more) companies.
We say that these companies merge. Most of the specific terms in this area are derived from the
semantic field of marriage, its event structure and participants finding correspondences in the
various stages and actors that define the event of marriage, too. Terms from this domain that are
no longer perceived as being metaphorical, having become technical vocabulary are
partner/partener, suitor/peitor, rival/rival. This metaphor is still a rich source of figurative
language:
72. For the banks and their regulator, the wooing and winning of such attractive
international partners is a triumph. (The Economist, 3 Sept. 2005)
73. They argue that this allows directors to consider all offers calmly during a takeover battle,
and so reward their shareholders, by attracting the highest bid from the most eligible
suitor. (The Economist, 26 March 2005)
74. Boeing received a boost over rival Airbus as Air Canada and Air India both said they
would place orders for long-haul aircraft with the American firm. (The Economist, 30
April 2005)
What can be noticed from an analysis of the examples above is the mixture of the
marriage and the war metaphor to speak about mergers and acquisitions. This can be explained
by a juxtaposition of the two events in the real world, too, where very often one scenario
(marriage) includes elements from the other (war), the winning of a partner being often viewed
as competition. This is reflected in the vocabulary of M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions), too.
Further reading

1. Mascull, Bill- Business Vocabulary in Use- Advanced, Cambridge University Press, 2006
2. Hollinger, Alexander- Test Your Business English Vocabulary, Teora, 2004
3. MacKenzie, Ian- English for Business Studies, Cambridge University Press, 2004
4. Bantas, Andrei si Nastasescu, Violeta- Dictionar economic englez- roman, Niculescu,
1999
5. Bantas, Andrei si Nastasescu, Violeta- Dictionar economic roman- englez, Niculescu,
1999
6. Longman Business English Dictionary, Longman, 2007
7. http://www.merriam-webster.com
8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
9. www.ft.com
10. www.economist.com