Word: french
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...company invited 150 analysts to a seminar in Miami last October that was the highlight of its investor-relations campaign. But on the evening before the seminar started, Brabeck let slip over drinks that Nestle had an option to acquire the French cosmetics company L'Oreal in 2004. When the markets opened the next morning, Nestle stock tumbled on fears about what such an acquisition would do to its already growing debt. Brabeck kicked off the seminar with an angry lecture, complaining that his remarks had been misinterpreted and reading aloud extracts from the option agreement with L'Oreal...
That may depend on where you stand. When TIME's Board of Economists met during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month, the perspectives varied according to geography. "The U.S. economy is on steroids," said a worried Pascal Blanque, chief economist at the French bank Credit Agricole. Blanque fears an America bulking up on dangerous deficits, a lax monetary policy and the falling dollar. "The European economy is on tranquilizers," retorted Laura D'Andrea Tyson, dean of the London Business School and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton Administration. She argues that...
...French economist, like Fang, warned against excessive focus on currency. Governments, particularly in France and Germany, need to continue reforming their economies to boost productivity, reduce the relatively high cost of labor and find better investment uses for a huge pool of savings that is sitting in bank accounts that yield very low returns. France's savings rate is higher even than Japan's. "The strength of the euro highlights European structural problems; it doesn't cause them," Blanque said...
...daily Libération. During a visit to Germany on Monday, Sarkozy voiced even steelier determination when declaring, "We were elected to transform France, and will apply these reforms because they must be applied." Aware of union promises to employ bare-knuckled defense of the "special regime" pensions, French Prime Minister François Fillon advised his parliamentary backers to "fasten your seat belts" ahead of tomorrow's turbulence...
...drive? Firstly, because successive governments have previously proposed and failed to modify the "special regimes" in the face of union resistance. And that is the second reason why the renewed attempt is producing a high-drama showdown. Although strong in sectors like transport - where strikes often cause enormous disruption - French unions represent less than 8% of the national workforce, and have seen their influence steadily wane over the years. Should they fail in their traditional "last stand" defense of the "special regime" pensions, they'd allow Sarkozy to storm what has been considered the unions' last bastion - and leave them...