As large companies find it more difficult to acquire another firm in the same or a related industry, they are typically driven to diversify into unrelated industries. High levels of taxation and constraining labor laws in Western European countries stimulate companies to alter their competitive strategies or find better locations elsewhere. It is because Germany has some of the highest labor and tax costs in Europe that German companies have been forced to compete at the top end of the market with high-quality products or else move their manufacturing to lower-cost countries. Government bureaucracy can create multiple regulations and make it almost impossible for a business firm to operate profitably in some countries. For example, the number of days needed to obtain the government approvals necessary to start a new business vary from only one day in Singapore to 14 in Mexico, 59 in Saudi Arabia, 87 in Indonesia, to 481 in the Congo.16