Word: citro
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...mergers have proved disappointing lately for such huge European companies as Dunlop Pirelli and British Leyland, but France's second and third biggest auto makers remain undaunted. Last week Peugeot and Citroën announced a kind of corporate engagement. Financial terms and most other aspects of the proposed merger were left vague by the companies' spectacularly uninformative statement, but one thing is clear: the merged firm will be a giant. Sales of the two companies now total about $4 billion a year, a figure running fender-to-fender with Daimler-Benz and outranked in the European auto...
Still, the combination seems curious. Citroën is obviously ripe for merger. The company in 1972 earned only a pathetic $6.3 million profit on $2 billion sales; last year it nearly doubled its earnings, but it recently announced that it expects a loss in 1974. The company has been hit hard by credit restrictions and high fuel costs, and its managers are more adept at engineering than at marketing. If the left had won the French presidential elections in May, Citroën would almost certainly have been a prime candidate for nationalization...
Peugeot seems to have less to gain from a merger. It has been doing very well on its own; in 1972 it earned $65.3 million, or ten times Citroën's profits, on just about the same sales: $2.1 billion. Peugeot offers a complete line of cars, in contrast to Citroën, which has concentrated on the upper and lower ends of the market with its avant-garde luxury lines and spartan, eccentrically styled Deux Chevaux. The merged company will be headed by Peugeot Director-General Francois Gautier, 67, but Michelin tire company, which owns a controlling...
...widow Claude, his son Alain, members of the government and old friends, crowded the baroque church for the 50-minute service. His casket was draped with the French tricolor and, as he had requested, a choir of monks chanted ancient Gregorian hymns. After the ceremony, a cortege of black Citroëns carried the immediate family and the casket to the Pompidous' weekend retreat in the village of Orvilliers, 31 miles outside of Paris. There, after an eight-minute prayer service, the body of the late President was interred in the graveyard of the parish church...
Sacks of Lire. Then, carefully following the kidnapers' instructions, Chase, in a rented car, headed south on the autostrada toward Naples. Just after passing Lagonegro, south of Naples, members of the gang pulled up alongside in a Citroën and pelted Chase's car with pebbles while the men inside rubbed their fingers together as a signal for money. Chase got the message and pulled over to the side. While he was handing over the sacks of lire, a car driven by a Rome detective with a pretty blonde policewoman at his side halted near by. Pretending...