Word: messier
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...contrast to the colorless apparatchiks who had given up power just a few months before. It was no fluke that Niezabitowska became the face of Poland's Third Republic: she symbolized a clean break with the country's communist past. Or did she? Today, that break looks a lot messier. Niezabitowska, 56, is one of tens of thousands of Poles who, in the past few months, have been accused of collaborating with the communist secret police (SB) in the 1980s. The accused include top politicians like Jozef Oleksy, who resigned from the post of parliament speaker after being found guilty...
...prefers an orderly Syrian withdrawal that would give international and Lebanese forces time to fill the security void. But the emotions stirred up by Hariri's death have raised the prospect of a far messier outcome. Many Lebanese believe the killing was an attempt by Damascus to halt the snowballing challenge to its hegemony. Hariri's death has galvanized the anti-Syria opposition. "There has been a real and dramatic change," says former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel. In Damascus, Syrian citizens wondered whether Lebanese rage over Hariri's death might provoke insurgent attacks against Syrian troops, which could reignite Lebanon...
...hard to find anybody in France who feels sorry for Jean-Marie Messier, the self-promoting former head of Vivendi Universal, who tried to turn the onetime water utility into a glitzy worldwide media giant and ended up driving it to the brink of bankruptcy. But after Messier was held in jail for 36 hours recently by magistrates who opened a formal criminal investigation against him, the big question is no longer how inept he's been. It's whether he was solely responsible for Vivendi's near downfall or is just taking the fall for the failings...
...follow-up demand for a formal investigation of the cob's president and general manager, both of whom are still in office. The cob, since renamed the Financial Market Authority, didn't respond to requests for comment. Vivendi's accounting is just as controversial. The magistrates' investigation asserts that Messier gave an overly rosy picture of the group's finances by including the profits and healthy cash flow of two telephone companies - Cegetel and Maroc Telecom - that it didn't fully control. Messier says the board, Vivendi's auditors and regulators all signed off on the accounts. And the company...
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...