They are a determined lot at Schneider Electric, having finally succeeded at the third attempt in their tilt at Aveva, the UK industrial software maker (if, as seems likely, the deal to take a 60 per cent stake and retain Aveva’s London listing succeeds). It almost certainly will because the UK company has been a potential takeover target for several years and has yet to attract a suitor from elsewhere.
You might ask, then, why the much bigger French firm did not bid for Aveva outright. The answer lies in the structure of the deal that leaves the UK management largely in place, excepting the question of who the new chief executive is to be, running a business that would include Schneider’s software operations and