The downfall of Jean-Marie Messier

Mr Messier was applauded by Vivendi staff as he left

World Business Review
By Sally Hardcastle BBC World Service business reporter

"They just hated him, basically" was the epitaph for the departed head of Vivendi Universal, voiced by a female employee on behalf of her colleagues.

She was joining in a chorus of condemnation for Jean-Marie Messier, a man who less than a year ago was just as loudly hailed as a hero of French business.

The Franco-American media empire he created during a two year buying spree is now portrayed as the product of an out-of-control megalomaniac.

And yet in June 2000 he had the full endorsement of Vivendi's directors when he crossed the Atlantic to buy the Universal Film and Music business for $34bn, and later spent many more billions on US television interests.

Daunting task

Now, laden with debt, having made the biggest loss in French corporate history last year, the unwieldy conglomerate will probably have to be split up.

Mr Messier's successor, Jean-Rene Fourtou, is regarded as something of an expert on restructuring companies.

Fourtou: regarded as an expert on restructuring companies

He has had little to say about how he will go about his new and daunting task.

Immediately after his appointment Mr Fourtou stated simply: "I have now a lot of work to do to solve this short term crisis, but I am quite confident we are going to solve it."

Unpopular

The French water treatment business, which served as the foundation for the grandiose growth of Vivendi into Vivendi Universal, looks set to stay in French hands.

So does Canal Plus, France's pay TV channel.

Mr Messier earned the disdain of employees there earlier this year when he sacked the network's popular chairman, Pierre Lescure.

They were already unhappy with the fact that he was determined to embrace all that is American.

The 45-year-old former civil servant even moved to New York.

And he was seen to be trying to curry favour across the Atlantic by announcing that the French cultural exception - the guaranteed quotas for locally-made programmes and films on French television - was dead.

Now the channel is credited with helping to bring him down by lampooning his pretensions on a weekly satirical show.

"The Messier charm"

Ironically, he also failed to endear himself to the Americans.

Mr Messier was seen as a hero of French business under a year ago

The New York Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Laura Holson, said that at Universal Studios he was regarded with some bemusement, largely because executives found it hard to understand his aims for the business.

They did not warm to the Messier charm.

"People here were trying to advise him on how to handle himself," Laura Holson explained.

"He very much moved into New York and embraced New York society. But New York society and New Yorkers are not that accepting, until they know you can deliver."

Colliding cultures

Workers at Universal Films and Music are used to foreign ownership.

Universal's assets were sold to Vivendi by Canada's Bronfman family, which could now be in a position to buy them back, for a great deal less than Messier paid.

The Bronfmans hold a 5% stake in Vivendi Universal and were among those who turned on Mr Messier in the boardroom.

As it is structured now the very different French and American business cultures collide inside Vivendi.

Americans find it hard to understand why there is so much political interference when it comes to the running of Canal Plus or the sale of the water treatment business, which simply does not fit into a media company.

Political links

Andrea Vaucher, Variety's Paris Correspondent said that Americans have little knowledge of French business culture.

A lot of the businessmen who've been active in this Vivendi shake-up have quite close links to the Chirac entourage

Andrew Freeman, the Economist

"There's a clan that runs the businesses in France," she pointed out.

"There's a group of 15 to 20 corporate CEOs who all sit on each others' boards, and they basically control the way everything is done."

The new head of Vivendi, Jean Rene Fourtou, is a member of this exclusive club with high-level political connections.

And it was political pressure that ensured no outsider could be given control.

"A lot of the businessmen who've been active in this Vivendi shake-up have quite close links to the Chirac entourage," said Andrew Freeman, European business correspondent of the Economist magazine.

"It's almost a kind of knee-jerk French reaction in the sense that France has certain business activities, which they really don't want to see fall into non-French hands, and that strikes many observers as a peculiar and rather old-fashioned approach."

The centre-right may have won power in France but its instincts to protect industry are very similar to those of the socialists.

And despite the fact that confidence in the French way of doing business has taken a knock, particularly in the stock market, it is showing a determination to survive.