Meet another big fan of Sarkozy: Mr Alain Minc, celebrity wheeler-and-dealer, Jewish, plagiarist(*), and out-and-out Zionist:
How Alain Minc, Critic of `Daddy Capitalism,' Plays French Game
By Gregory Viscusi
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- French investment banker Alain Minc has for two decades advised executives on mergers, counseled politicians on strategy and educated the international press on how France works. A frequent guest on CNN and the BBC, he's known for both his inside knowledge of French corporations and his biting critiques of their clubby practices.
Don't be fooled by this eminence grise, writes Laurent Mauduit in ``Petits Conseils'' (``Tips''), a feisty portrait that says Minc has exploited some of the worst aspects of France's incestuous business world to enrich himself.
``The `Minc System' has survived because of denial and cowardliness,'' Mauduit writes. ``In a more transparent republic, Alain Minc would have nothing to offer.''
A financial journalist, Mauduit has run the business pages of two of France's most influential newspapers, Libération and Le Monde. His position has given him access to many of the corporate leaders with whom Minc has worked (and clashed). It has also given him a personal reason to resent Minc -- a bitterness that impregnates every chapter of this book.
Mauduit quit Le Monde last year after an article he wrote about Groupe Caisse d'Epargne, France's fourth-largest bank, was spiked. It was killed, he maintains, under pressure from Minc, who chairs Le Monde's supervisory board and has advised Caisse d'Epargne, which took part in a 2002 capital injection into the newspaper.
Minc, the 58-year-old head of his own advisory boutique, AM Conseil, disputed Mauduit's assertions in a recent interview in French magazine Marianne, saying that he had no secret conflicts of interest and that he had protected Le Monde's independence.
Planets and Suns
``I deserve neither this excess of honor nor these insults,'' he was quoted as saying. He described himself and other financial advisers as planets that revolve around the real suns, investors. ``I take the service elevator, even if it might have a nice thick carpet,'' he said.
Though flawed, Mauduit's book offers a well-researched run- through of recent French business history. It's packed with facts and anecdotes, including the intriguing assertion that Minc, not Le Monde Editor Jean-Marie Colombani, wrote the paper's famous ``We are all Americans'' headline the day after 9/11.
In Mauduit's view, Minc exemplifies corporate France, which likes free markets for profits, yet engages in ``collusion'' when it's more convenient. ``France is a country with hybrid capitalism, halfway between Anglo-Saxon capitalism and the old capitalism of complicity,'' Mauduit writes.
Both Sides Now
In advising investors, executives and politicians, Minc often plays both sides of the fence, Mauduit reports. When Suez SA sold its construction subsidiary to Société Générale d'Entreprise in 2000, for example, Minc advised the chief executives of both, Mauduit says. That deal created the world's largest construction company, Vinci SA.
Minc also advised both the chief executive of Club Méditerranée SA, Philippe Bourguignon, and the company's largest shareholder, Italy's Agnelli family, during a 2002 dispute over how to revive sales. In the end, Minc helped the Agnellis oust Bourguignon, Mauduit says. (Minc told Marianne that Bourguignon ignored his warnings that investors were unhappy.)
The investment banker has similarly advised politicians on both the left and the right. He's close to French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy as well as to Socialist leaders such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Close to Home
For all of his criticisms of the French corporate system -- he once dubbed it ``daddy capitalism,'' after its clutch of family-controlled companies -- Minc has stuck close to home in his advisory business. The only significant deals he has brokered outside France have been in Italy and Spain, whose business practices resemble France's.
As for the deals he has worked on, they often end in failure, Mauduit argues. In the 1980's, for example, Minc engineered massive expansions at glassmaker Cie. de Saint-Gobain SA and at Cerus SA, the French holding company of Italian financier Carlo de Benedetti. Both companies had to sell assets after expanding too fast, as Mauduit reminds us.
Mauduit concludes that Minc's power is slipping as French companies adopt stricter standards of corporate governance. ``Alain Minc is losing his power and his influence, just as the old capitalism of collusion, of which he is one of the most spectacular emblems, is dying,'' he says.
``Petits Conseils'' is published by Editions Stock (406 pages, 20.99 euros).
(Gregory Viscusi writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this review: Gregory Viscusi in Paris at gviscusi@bloomberg.net
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(*) fr.wikipedia.org |
