Vestager Talks Tough on Deals After Siemens-Alstom Meeting (1)

The day after meeting with Siemens AG and Alstom SA about their stuttering plans to create a rail colossus, the European Union’s competition commissioner warned a German audience that politically backed industrial giants can’t be built by sidestepping tough merger rules.

“We can’t build those champions by undermining competition,” Margrethe Vestager told the Welt economic summit in Berlin Jan. 9. “We can’t build them with mergers that harm competition, or by looking the other way when Europe’s businesses break our rules.”

Her thinly veiled warning follows further concessions offered by Siemens and Alstom executives at a Jan. 8 meeting with ...