Andrea Mandel-Campbell

It really is a shame to lose Alcan Inc. to a foreign buyer, even if it is a more politically palatable, friendly takeover by Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto PLC, rather than a hostile bid by U.S. rival AlcoaInc.

Unlike so many Canada-based companies to go the way of the dodo in the wake of massive global consolidation, the Montreal aluminum giant is a rare multinational gem. While former icon Molson squandered its global possibilities to squabble with Labatt over domestic market share and deserved to be snapped up by U.S. brewer Coors, Alcan, with operations in 61 countries, busied itself building smelters from Iceland to India.

But before crying a river of bauxite for yet another hollowed-out Canadian metals champ, you might want to hold the Kleenex. You see, even with Maison Alcan taking orders from Down Under, life at the company's sleek downtown headquarters won't change that much. That's not because Rio Tinto has offered to keep the head office in Montreal, retain the venerable Alcan name in the newly christened subsidiary and keep on Alcan chief Dick Evans as its new CEO. Rather, the Quebec company is accustomed to foreign taskmasters, while it owes little of its global vision to the province it calls home.

When Alcoa first took a run at its Canadian cousin back in May, both Liberal party leader Stephane Dion and the godfather of Quebec business, Laurent Beaudoin, demanded Canadian companies be shielded from the foreign onslaught.

The irony, of course, is that Alcan began life a century ago as the Canadian and international arm of Pittsburgh-based Alcoa. The Canadian subsidiary was run by the brother of Alcoa founder, Arthur Vining Davis, after whom Alcan's main Arvida complex is named. While antitrust concerns forced Alcoa's principal shareholders to divest from either Alcoa or Alcan, the Davis family continued to head up the company, mostly from offices in New York and Boston, until the 1980s.

Not much has changed. Travis Engen, Alcan's CEO until 2006, used to commute to work from Connecticut. His successor, Dick Evans, is also American, although at least he conceded to living in Montreal. Some argue it doesn't really matter where a CEO, especially one managing a sprawling multinational such as Alcan, lives. Still, the company's operating structure is curiously reminiscent of the old branch plant concept so familiar to Canadians.

While Alcan owes much of its position as the world's number three aluminum producer to its cheap access to hydroelectricity in Quebec and British Columbia, its much-touted, valued-added downstream activities are run almost entirely outside of Canada.

Alcan's engineered products and packaging divisions, which together represent US$13.1-billion of its US$23.6-billion in revenues, are both headquartered in France and headed up by French and U.S. executives, respectively.

Even its North American packaging subdivision is based in Chicago, while Alcan supplies aluminum aerospace parts to Bombardier from operations in West Virginia.

As for research and development, Alcan employs about 200 at its Arvida facility, but the majority -- some 700 --are based in France, where the company has focused its efforts, investing several hundred million dollars in recent years to develop its trademark AP technology.

Now, that is not to say Canadian input is limited to churning out the raw material on the Saguenay. After American Cynthia Caroll stepped down as CEO of Alcan's primary metal division in 2006 to head up London super-major miner Anglo-American, she was replaced by Michel Jacques, a Quebecer. His compatriot, Jacynthe Cote runs the company's fourth, albeit much smaller, bauxite and alumina division. Both are based in Mont-real.

But if the argument for protecting Canadian-headquartered companies from foreign acquisition is that they are crucial for nurturing homegrown managers and executives with global vision and strategic chutzpah, then Alcan might not be the sacred cow we would have thought it to be.

If, on the other hand, it's because politicians and others want to at least have a shiny head office to show off for handing out super cheap hydroelectric rights, that's another thing entirely.

It would seem that under Alcan's new ownership, Canadians would have the same opportunity to shine as they did in the past.

We'll never know what they could have done had the company remained independent, which is a shame, but then again far bigger opportunties could lie ahead.

-Andrea Mandel-Campbell is the author of the recently published Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson

© Financial Post 2007