Word: french
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tapie is well qualified to discuss the merits of the new French dream. Creator and manager of the holding company Groupe Tapie, which had profits of $45 million on sales of roughly $1 billion in 1985, Tapie was the son of a pipe fitter in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve. As a teenager he helped support his family by hauling burlap sacks of coal. Tapie first went into management consulting, but soon began starting new companies. His first few ventures failed disastrously, but in the late '70s he suddenly discovered his forte: rejuvenating bankrupt businesses. Thanks to his talent...
...French press Tapie is referred to as the "proletarian millionaire" because of his relaxed style. "He runs a horizontal management," explains Camille Letierce, director general of the company's sports division. "In France, the chief executive officer has often been a stuffy and stiff individual hidden away from real contact with his workers. But Bernard is out in front of his troops, openly announcing that he wants to make money. He's very American. He's our cowboy. He's our Ronald Reagan." Tapie has been called "Zorro" and "the miracle man," but he reacts contemptuously to such titles...
...been growing desperately slowly," says Jean-Claude Trichet, chief of staff of France's Ministry of Economy, Finance and Privatization. The Continent has been slow to adapt or innovate as economic events moved rapidly, a condition that was dubbed Eurosclerosis. Its experience with high-technology projects, like the Anglo- French Concorde supersonic jet and the national French computer program, have been costly disappointments...
...Solzhenitsyn's voluminous account, published in the mid-1970s, of the appalling Soviet Gulag camps for political prisoners. The period brought the spectacle of Communist Leader Pol Pot's genocide of perhaps 3 million Cambodians. Writer Bernard-Henri Levy blamed Marxism for Communist atrocities, and the charge resonated among French thinkers. Although their disillusionment was intellectual, it helped set the stage for Europe's economic shift half a decade later...
...expect from so historic an institution as the Paris Opera Ballet, but both items came along on the troupe's first American appearance since 1948. Expectations for the visit ran very high. The company's school is considered one of the world's best, a preserver of both the French and Italian technique and dance vocabulary. The institution itself has an ineffable aura of glamour, and in three years as dance director, Rudolf Nureyev has earned a reputation for leading it energetically...