"Neil Williams" wrote in message

On Jan 4, 11:51 pm, Ross wrote:

In any case, the Germans seem to consider DB AG to be "privatised",
where we would (in layman's terms) say it is a "nationalised company"
or possibly that it has been "vested as a trading company" if we were
trying to be clever (and that's probably the wrong description
anyway, so we wouldn't be being that clever!).

That sounds about right to me - unfortunately Lueko won't seem to
accept the difference, and instead insists that he and only he is
right.

So it seems that in the UK what matters is who owns it, whereas in
Germany what matters is what structure is used to define its
ownership. Each to their own, I suppose.

I wonder what Lüko would think if DB AG was indeed freely traded, and
some shadowy Ukrainian billionaire, who liked trains more than yachts,
tried to buy a controlling interest. Would Lüko still think that
ownership didn't matter? And would the German government allow it
(judging by VW, the answer is "no")?