For Sale: America

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West Germany, awash in boodle from selling U.S. customers everything from beer to BMWs, has taken aim at heavier industry. The huge Hoechst chemical firm last March paid $2.8 billion to acquire Celanese, the U.S. fibers firm best known for its Fortrel polyester. For its part, France's Thomson electronics company forged a deal in July to buy GE's consumer-electronics arm in exchange for an estimated $800 million cash and title to the French company's medical-equipment division. That arrangement left Zenith as the last sizable American firm to manufacture TV sets in the U.S.

Even the remote Australians have got into the corporate-takeover act. Investor George Herscu, a real estate magnate, is constructing $1.2 billion worth of supermalls to add to the $500 million string of shopping centers he has accumulated in Ohio, Florida, Colorado and South Carolina. Herscu also spent $100 million to buy Bonwit Teller, the fashion retailing chain, which he aims to double in size. In a widely publicized purchase this year, Natural Resources Magnate Robert Holmes a Court spent $1 billion to buy 9.5% of Texaco. Last month Australian Investor Alan Bond offered $500 million for the St. Joe Gold mineral corporation of Clayton, Mo.

For many parts of America, a megadose of foreign investment is a welcome tonic. In small towns or rusted industrial cities that have been unable to attract American capital, foreign money is virtually the only means to create new jobs (see box). Nearly three years ago, local boosters in Winslow, Ariz. (pop. 8,900), induced a Korean company, Young An Headwear, to buy a long- dormant underwear-manufacturing plant on nearby Hopi Indian reservation land. The refurbished factory has since provided 80 new jobs and produces $2 million worth of sport caps annually. In Fontana, Calif., a joint venture of Brazil's Rio Doce Geologia & Mineraco mining company and Japan's Kawasaki Steel reopened a foundry that was shut down in 1983. It now produces 1 million tons of steel a year and employs 800 workers. Says Kenneth Gibson, director of the California commerce department: "You wouldn't have a steel industry in this state if it were not for foreign investments."

Where U.S. businesses are merely dying rather than dead, foreign buyers flush with cash and enthusiasm can sometimes cause a dramatic turnaround. Canada's Cineplex Odeon theater chain, for example, has bought and spruced up more than 300 mostly decrepit U.S. movie theaters, at a cost of roughly $475 million. The Toronto-based company revives business by boosting the quality of feature presentations and perking up the housekeeping, the acoustics and even the quality of the popcorn.

One of the most dramatic cases of a foreign-assisted turnaround involves the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea company, parent of A&P. The supermarket chain was ailing badly when West Germany's Tengelmann Group took over in 1980, after anteing up $100 million for control of Great Atlantic. A&P's foreign owners installed a new top manager and restored the company's reputation within three years, first by selling 600 unprofitable stores out of a total of 1,600, then by patiently plowing profits back into the remainder.