Word: fourtou
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...Vivendi's board, which signed off on most of Messier's adventures? "The directors aren't choirboys," says Canoy. "They should be sanctioned, too, because they let Messier get away with this." The board has been thoroughly reshuffled since Messier was replaced by Jean-René Fourtou in July 2002. The company declines comment. Still, by focusing all the attention on Messier, "we're just kicking a man who's down," Neuville says. "To have real corporate governance in France, we need to examine all the causes of the disaster...
...business world has changed dramatically since Fourtou got in the game 40 years ago. He says he has witnessed a massive increase in pressure from investors. "When I began my career, we didn't look at the stock price, or only from time to time. Today you can't help looking at it several times a day," he says. That current European chief executives have less job security than they used to "doesn't shock me--to the contrary. We've also had a very big increase in salaries in the last few years," says Fourtou, whose annual salary...
Within a week, Fourtou secured a credit line of $994 million, enough to stave off default but not enough to keep the firm running smoothly for long. A few weeks later, he borrowed $1.96 billion more. Then Fourtou took out his scalpel and started to operate. "It was a matter of survival," he tells TIME. "I had to survive the first days, then the first weeks." Even though Moody's did downgrade Vivendi, Fourtou has pulled the company through...
...Fourtou's experience may be extreme, but it's emblematic of the baptism by fire that new European CEOs often face these days. Fourtou is practically the anti-Messier. A sturdily built rugby fan from southwestern France, he is as low-key as Messier was flashy. Unlike Messier, whose acquisition spree was propelled by a subsequently discredited vision of the future, Fourtou has taken an approach to Vivendi that is basic. Rather than embracing a grandiose strategy, he started by selling what was easiest to sell while asking shareholders to be patient. After some strategic twisting and turning, he decided...
...Fourtou, a connoisseur of Bordeaux wine, was in his early 60s and cruising comfortably toward retirement after 16 years as head of the pharmaceutical firm Rhone-Poulenc, now part of Aventis. But the Vivendi board was desperate to find a respected executive to calm the company. Fourtou, who is 64, initially resisted but has since performed brilliantly. He has sold off about $12 billion in assets--not including Universal--and reshaped Vivendi around its telecommunications, music and French TV businesses. Those pieces don't make a great strategic fit, his critics point out, but Vivendi is a far more manageable...