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Research into the origins of the first protocell is of a multidisciplinary nature. It draws evidence from what we know about the Earth’s early atmosphere and environment, and about the most ancient features of the cell’s structure and composition. Such data provides the input for the hypothesis generation and experimental reconstruction necessary to mimic steps in the formation of the first protocell. While research into the origins of the first protocell is condemned to focus upon laboratory experiments, it should be guided by a detailed study of real evidence pertaining to the environment on Earth 4 billion years ago. In this review, we take stock of the research that has been performed to date across the main disciplines of earth sciences, biochemistry, and molecular biology. We seek to identify the progress made in laying down a sequence for the events that led up to the first protocell. We also assess the strengths and weaknesses of the experimental designs and suggest some future approaches. While the field has made many important advances, from the original Stanley Miller experiment establishing ‘life from chemistry’ products such as amino acids, through to Deamer’s findings on fatty acid membranes and Szostack’s work on lipids, there is still a long and challenging journey ahead to understand how cellular life began. The experiments required to make more rapid progress in the field will likely be more elaborate, costly, and time consuming.

By 1995, Germany was turning, approximately, its tenth anniversary of LBO activity. Eleven years had passed since Brian Fenwick-Smith acquired VEMAG from Reemtsma, and it was nine years since Schroders bought Jofrika. In that time, many young Germans and ex-pats had cut their teeth on buyouts in the German Mittelstand. Arguably, the worst years were over, and not only had experience been gathered, but a culture of M&A activity, partially provoked by the Treuhand, had spilt over into a nascent concern for shareholder value. Perhaps more significantly, Germany had witnessed some larger buyouts, particularly the joint CWB Capital/Goldman Sachs acquisition of Bran + Luebbe in 1994.

The creation of Genes, TVM, and HANNOVER Finanz helped with the process of importing more sophisticated approaches to equity and debt into Germany. It is significant that both Genes and TVM were authentic transplants of US venture capitalism. Those connected with their development would find it an easy step forward into leveraged buyouts, and many of them made this move within a very short space of time.

With so little experience, it was inevitable that mistakes should be made in the early LBO deals: buyouts were as likely to generate complete losses as the early venture capital investments. Two approaches to portfolio building emerged during the 1989–1991 period.

No sooner had Schroders begun its activities than others began to follow. Indeed the timing of the early office openings is so close that their exact sequence is difficult to pinpoint (quite a few will claim to have been the first-movers). Otto van der Wyck hired Wolfgang Schaaf and Max Romer to open up CVC for him in Frankfurt, Friedrich von der Groeben paired up with Andrew Richards to initiate 3i Germany, and frenetic activity was stirred up within the Munich Office of Bain & Company, which led to a cross-roads decision on whether to stay committed to consulting or switch paths to private equity.

In the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, a disgruntled and militant Judean asks “What have the Romans ever done for us?” His colleagues begin to give answers: the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, education, medicine, education, wine, public baths, civic order and peace. But although the Judean freedom fighters’ list is long, the implication is clear: the Romans have never done anything for the Judeans.

From the start of the 1990s, the Treuhand and reunification of Germany dominated much of the M&A agenda. But even before the establishment of the Treuhand, Count Matuschka campaigned to encourage a completely different approach to the privatisation of the DDR’s assets, as he explains: Kohl appointed a number of people to give him advice on how to handle the privatisation process, and I was one of them. I developed the coupon programme, which would have helped to enrich the East German managements and employees of these companies, and given them a stake in the development of their businesses. But in the end, our government did the reverse. In eastern Germany, out of a peasant paradise, we created an unemployment paradise. We left those people without equity, and instead gave a DM 1,200 billion subsidy to West German companies to take them over. I was not alone in speaking out against this. Karl Otto Pohl of the Bundesbank for instance expressed a similar opinion. So there were those who made an open stand against this approach. Instead, huge subsidies were spent helping West German investors put capital intensive businesses into East Germany, which in the case of Bitterfeld meant an investment of DM 14 million for every place of work preserved at the site.1

In many periods of history there are defining years, whether they be crises, turning points, or moments of high fashion. In our story of the private equity experience in Germany, there can be no question that 1997 marked a sea change, when major corporations awoke to the potential of divesting under-performing businesses. Overnight, the deal-flow increased, and the deals which flowed were larger, more global, and of considerably higher quality. Some of the new sellers were no longer owner-managers of medium-sized firms, but senior executives in publicly traded companies. Andre Mangin, who at the time was working as an investment banker in Barings and Merrill Lynch, remembers: It was around 1997 that private equity really started gaining ground. It was at this time that the large German corporates realised that private equity houses made up an interesting group of buyers. They had never really been considered to be serious before. That’s not to say that large German corporates didn’t retain their doubts about whether private equity houses could execute large deals. But Merrill, Goldman, and Morgan Stanley were touring around, explaining to the German corporates that they needed to clean up their portfolios, and convincing them that private equity houses were viable partners to help them do this. Banks were still hesitant to provide financing, but even they were beginning to warm to this new kind of asset class.

Many times a collapse in one market brings with it unexpected beneficiaries. The bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001, and the fall from grace of venture capital, had some spill-over into the area of private equity. For a while, the rise of the stock markets helped the development of private equity, particularly in Germany, where for the first time, there was a feeling that the options for exits were growing. But at the peak of the bubble, old economy deals were suffering. Few people were interested in the IPO of a long-standing business with a modest growth rate, even if it was well-positioned and international. Hordes of professionals were upping sticks to move over to ventures, either to set up new companies, service them as principles, or to act for them in an advisory capacity. So while the events of 2001 had negative side-effects for private equity, the impact was not all negative. Indeed, after a brief fall back in the number of buyouts closed in 2001, private equity activity was to enjoy its own boom, reaching undreamed of heights of activity and valuations by the spring of 2007.

It was the “economic miracle” that created the demand for minority-based participations. Mid-cap companies in Germany required injections of growth capital as they expanded. German GDP between 1950 and 1973 increased almost four-fold, and tripled on a per capita basis.’ The challenge for medium-sized companies was to find the capital to finance this growth. The house bank could not always be relied upon to meet all of a company’s needs, especially when increases in debt were not matched by further injections of equity. H.E. Buschgen, in his chapter “Die Deutsche Bank von 1957 bis zur Gegenwart” (published in Die Deutsche Bank von 1870 bis 1995) summarised the challenge: In the mid 1960s, many medium-sized companies, with no direct access to capital markets, found that they were only able to finance rapid growth using their own resources to a limited extent. It was against this background that the banks began founding Kapital-beteiligungsgesellschaften (capital participation companies), in order to provide small and medium-sized companies with additional equity.2

By the mid-1970s the state, whose focus for some years had been upon providing support for companies too small to be served by the likes of the DBG and its competitors, turned its attention to “young” and “technological” companies. No history of private equity in Germany can avoid mention of the ill-fated government-bank initiated Deutsche Wagnisfinanzierungsgesellschaft which was the result of this initiative. Ralf Becker and Thomas Hellmann in their paper The Genesis of Venture Capital — Lessons from the German Experience do an excellent job of analysing why this experiment failed. Becker and Hellmann explain the background to this unusual initiative: Throughout the sixties, there was a growing concern about an equity gap in Germany. While in the mid-sixties a typical German company still had 35% equity, this percentage had fallen to 25% by the early 1970s. Small and medium sized companies had even less equity, about 20%. After the first oil shock, the problem became even more pressing as higher interest rates burdened the balance sheets of companies.1

Given the trials and tribulations of the early phases, it may seem difficult to comprehend that later phases of private equity in Germany were possible. One explanation for the next phase must be that newcomers thought they would never make the same mistakes as the pioneers. Indeed many of the individuals who helped set up new private equity houses at the beginning of the 1990s were well familiar with the problems of Matuschka, 3i, and Barings. A second explanation is that the market was considered too promising to be tarnished by a few bad deals. Succession problems were considered to be rife in Germany, providing opportunities for new funds to prove their worth. A final, perhaps more cynical explanation, is that bankers have been known to have short memories. Money had been lost, but there were still abundant opportunities for future gain.

There was a feeling of inevitability around the financial crisis which started in the summer of 2007. The sceptics who felt that the collapse would happen sooner rather than later were proven correct on the timing, but wrong on the cause. It was a US house price bust that started the process, not a global recession. The sudden steep fall in US house prices caused immediate problems for mortgages granted to people who could scarcely afford them. These “sub-prime” mortgages had been securitised in the form of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and sold around the world. The fall in value of these CDOs burdened the balance sheets of financial institutions which had acquired them. It quickly became apparent that almost every bank in the world was affected, and as a consequence, the credit crunch which ensued was a global one. The credit crunch quickly spilled over into the syndicated debt market, and wiped away the large-cap market for deals, and carried with it much banking enthusiasm for financing mid-cap deals as well. Many people in banks and PE houses were left with the feeling that there was nothing much left useful to do.

It is an amusing coincidence that at the turn of the decade, the most important private equity players should make wholesale changes in their management teams. In hindsight it is now clear that this is one of the recurring themes of private equity: it is typical to have a fairly high level of churn among the players, with individuals switching from one house to another, and management teams leading their own buyouts. But at the beginning of the 1990s this was all new. The stimuli behind the changes of management team were of course very different. The move of the Matuschka portfolio to the stewardship of Bain & Company was clearly a symbol and symptom of the failure of the Matuschka Group, and in part, the MatCap subsidiary which had built up its private equity investments. Over at Barings Capital, the collapse of Lignotock gave rise to a change of team, but the fund remained the same. Jens Reidel came in to provide a new start for Barings Capital in Germany, but without the legacy of a portfolio, given that the single investment made by his predecessors had gone to the wall. At CVC, the situation was far less traumatic. Max Romer and his team made the decision to spin-off, and their decision was met with a generous spirit by their colleagues at Citigroup in London. Steve Koltes took over the CVC German portfolio, which was in good order.

As the economy climbed out of recession in 2004 the scale of private equity deal making began to explode, with an annual growth in the number of transactions of 20% per annum. New private equity houses entered the market at all levels: large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap. Even PE houses that had deliberately avoided the German market for some years, such as Charterhouse and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, changed tack.

Without doubt, the success story of the 1980s was Schroder Ventures. From the small beginnings of the Jofrica deal, Schroders stunned much of the German establishment with the purchase, and then rapid IPO, of Ex-Cell-O. Thomas Matzen found himself featured in manager magazin under the title “The King-maker” for having made the CEO of Ex-Cell-O a rich man.

The first early shoots of a more entrepreneurial approach to growth and venture capital emerged in the period 1978-1984. This was a time of much unrest in Germany, coming shortly after the “German Autumn” of 1977, when Red Army Faction terrorism began. It was a period when many West German citizens had grown tired of the Cold War, with its legacy of “mutually assured destruction”. Yet despite a growing scepticism of the US’s role in the world, many Germans were captivated by the technological miracle of Silicon Valley, and questioned whether such innovation could be stimulated in Germany. The prospects looked poor. Germany’s corporations had become conservative and bureaucratic, so heavily divided into functional specialisms that no manager had oversight of the whole. If Germany was to keep up with the Americans, it would undoubtedly require a new generation of entrepreneurs. But where were they to be found, and how could they be empowered to break new ground?

Minimizing alignment errors in the past has been fairly straightforward. The aim has always been to drive the overlay model correctables to zero either instantly or after a number of lots processed in a short time frame depending on the controller setup. Methods for improving alignment have included minimizing components of variation tied to the exposure tool, metrology tool, process setup, or the model itself. Instead of working on these components, a less expensive alternative for improving the final outcome as represented by the device performance may be not to minimize the overlay correctables but to instead drive to a specific target as defined by the process window around any such correctable. This paper will briefly show that lithography at present geometries is no longer the sole controller of alignment but that in fact other areas such as films, etch, and CMP influence alignment significantly. It will also be shown that in certain instances vertical wafer topography or feature profile may create device asymmetries, which may be compensated partially through application of non-zero overlay correctables. Coping with decreased overlay performance and methodology for controlling overlay biases is also shown.

The first elected Parliament in Europe and the first Thatcher government in Britain coincided very closely. But the history of Britain’s relations with Europe bears oddly little relation to the evolution of her domestic politics over the same period.

The economic miracle that transformed Japan into one of the largest, most fiercely competitive economies in the world did not occur until after the Second World War. Faced with the total devastation of their industrial base, the Japanese used American financial aid not only to rebuild but also to transform the structure of their economy. By the mid-1960s and early 1970s, armed with advanced high technology and a loyal battalion of inscrutably efficient workers, Japan came to pose a serious and powerful threat to some of the world’s most prestigious economies.

By the beginning of the 1980s America had become increasingly concerned about the threat of Japanese competition; electronics companies in particular were calling for government intervention to curb what they considered to be an excessive level of Japanese imports. The Japanese strategy of targeting particular market segments, and then using their highly developed manufacturing techniques and marketing skills to produce and distribute high-quality low-cost products, had already won them the lion’s share of the world consumer electronics market (televisions, stereos, calculators, electronic toys and digital watches), and was beginning to threaten the US semiconductor industry.

The initiative for the British Fifth Generation Computer Project came from a small group of computer science academics. Early in 1981, on learning of the dangerous threat presented by the imminent Japanese programme, Tony Hoare of Oxford University, Bob Kowalski of Imperial College, London, and Donald Michie of Edinburgh University, took it upon themselves to write to the Department of Industry (DoI) to suggest that these Tokyo developments, and their implications, should be the subject of a thorough investigation. This letter went without reply. In September 1981 the DoI received an invitation from MITI to send observers to the conference with marked the launch of their Fifth Generation Computer Programme. Despite this earlier concern shown by Hoare, Kowalski and Michie, the ministry turned to other British academics, asking, among others, Roger Needham of Cambridge University, Brian Randell of Newcastle University and Philip Treleaven of Reading, if they would be prepared to attend the MITI conference, and then, in the light of their findings, report back to the government on what they considered to be appropriate strategies for the British to adopt. The academics were joined on the trip by Ron Atkinson of the DoI.

Although by the 1980s Europe constituted approximately one-third of the world market for electronics, European manufacturers were in a weaks position, supplying only 10 per cent of the world and 40 per cent of domestic IT markets. In 1975 the European Community had enjoyed a trade surplus in IT of 1.7 billion ECU; by 1984 this surplus had been turned into a 5 billion ECU deficit. By 1981 the Japanese had completed their VLSI project, and were on the threshold of their Fifth Generation Computer initiative; while IBM, as a consequence of large-scale, innovative and highly successful research, commanded 50 per cent of the European computer market. By contrast, the position of European manufacturers, which were estimated to be devoting 80 per cent of their R&D expenditure to catching up, appeared to be far less secure.

This chapter reviews and evaluates the economic, political and geographical development of IT, examining the crucial issue of the appropriate role of the government, and analysing the global strategies of companies participating in the IT race between 1945 and 1980. Consequently, industrial development and government policies in the USA, Japan and Britain are the principal focus of attention.

For better or worse the European Parliament elected in 1979 was going to be different. It had 410 members1 instead of 198 and only one third of them (130) were national legislators exercising a dual mandate. It was widely assumed that being directly elected, MEPs would have more authority than when they were merely delegates from a national parliament.

In contrast to the other parties the Conservatives could only lose from the European elections. Thanks to Labour’s neglect of the first elections, Conservative candidates had fared exceptionally well in 1979. In 1984 they were bound to forfeit some Euro-seats even on the figures of their 1983 General Election triumph, even without allowing for the ground they had undoubtedly lost. They faced a Labour party eager to show that under its new leadership it had advanced in campaigning skills and public popularity. Moreover in 1984 the Alliance posed a greater threat than the Liberals had done in 1979. The Conservatives, who felt that their mandate to govern had been completely confirmed in June 1983, knew that there was no chance of the European elections enhancing that mandate. The elections were seen not so much as an opportunity but as an exercise in damage-limitation.

The Alliance between the Liberal and Social Democratic parties had very variable electoral fortunes in its first three years. During the euphoria ofits first months, it touched 50% in the opinion polls when Shirley Williams had just won the Crosby by-election of November 1981. But the early dreams of a breakthrough waned with the Falklands war and the Conservative recovery. By the time of the general election in June 1983 it was almost a surprise that the Alliance came so close to being the second party, winning 26% of the vote as against Labour’s 28%. Yet, with only 23 seats to Labour’s 209, the Alliance had failed to establish a bridgehead at Westminster. Thereafter, as the Alliance leaders intensified their campaign for a fairer voting system, they looked with particular interest to the European Parliament, with its long term commitment to a common electoral system (which would necessarily involve proportional representation).

At the national level an election can be described with some confidence. The principal actors are closely watched; if they say or do anything significant, the media usually record it. The stimuli that the voter receives from press conferences, from television and radio news stories about the rival speeches, statements, and walkabouts, and from party political broadcasts can be observed and — even though the survey evidence on their net impact is limited — they can, to some extent, be measured.

The NHS, under the umbrella of the DHSS, is the organisation which throughout the postwar period has employed performance indicators most extensively. As Table 2.1 illustrates, the collection and analysis of health service statistics is not, however, merely a postwar phenomenon; it began as early as 1732 when a Dr Clifton first suggested that basic health care data should be gathered and used as an instrument of evaluation: Dr Clifton in 1732 and Florence Nightingale in the mid-nineteenth century suggested that certain items of data about all hospital in-patients should be systematically recorded, analysed and published, to enable the work undertaken by hospitals to be assessed. (Goldacre and Griffen, Performance Indicators.)

Throughout this chapter we shall be focusing upon the strategies of selected Second Tier players (see Table 3.1) — particularly the Bank of Scotland, the TSB, Citibank Savings and Coutts & Co. During the last decade members of the Second Tier (with the exception of Coutts) have been raising their profiles, exploiting market opportunities and flexing their muscles with such determination and aggression, that the Big Four can no longer dismiss them passively as benign and harmless. Having acquired substantial assets, experience and expertise, together with significant customer bases, several of the Second Tier players are, from the Big Four’s perspective, strategically well-positioned to launch potentially damaging campaigns.

Michael Porter’s model of the five forces of competition (see Figure 2.1) suggests that the attractiveness of an industry can be assessed by examining the intensity of competition between existing players, the reality, probability or ease of territorial invasion by new entrants, the bargaining power of both buyers and suppliers, and by analysing the extent to which it is possible for rival firms in related, competing sectors to gain market shares at the expense of established, incumbent firms.