81.   The partners had their first vacation together last year when they took their families to Phoenix a week before the start of a Morgan Stanley investment conference.

82.   The partners had to run a gantlet of federal regulators in the United States and European Union officials in Brussels.

83.   The partners will have their work cut out for them.

84.   The partners have an unwritten agreement that if the managing director of the group is French, the supervisory board chairman is a German.

85.   The partners will still have to rent lines from Deutsche Telekom, she said.

86.   The penalty primarily affects couples in which the two partners have roughly equal incomes.

87.   The problem with the usual joint venture is that, because the Chinese partner generally has a majority stake, the foreign firm has little say in management.

88.   The reluctant partners have to find some less-than-perfect way of coexisting on their patch of land.

89.   The remaining partners had no clout and were glad to take the buyout.

90.   The partners have no plans to go public, but say they are close to getting more venture capital.