Jean-Marie Messier took a stogy French utility and construction conglomerate and converted it into an unwieldy media monstrosity in numerous related and unrelated businesses including Universal Studios. During the dot.com bubble, he drank the internet Cool Aid and paid fabulous prices for companies whose value evaporated like water spilt on summer asphalt.
As the value of his empire collapsed, he met his Götterdämmerung.
Eventually French financier Vincent Bolloré took a dominant position in the company, became Vivendi's chairman, and divested many of its assets to concentrate on content. In the process, Vivendi has piled up €16bn of cash. Lex’s Oliver Ralph and Robert Armstrong discuss whether Vincent Bolloré should return this money to shareholders in this Mar 23, 2015 video:
However, there is nothing like idle cash to attract the wolves. Bolloré now faces an activist challenge from Wall Street’s quiet professor Peter Schoenfel, the head of the hedge fund, P. Schoenfeld Asset Management.
Monday, March 23, 2015
The inside story of how Clarke’s tenure at Tesco came to an end
Andrea Felsted and Andrew Hill tell "The inside story of how Clarke’s tenure at Tesco came to an end" in the Financial Times, July 23, 2014
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