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Technology Stocks : Alcatel (ALA) and France -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lebo who wrote (215)	11/18/1998 10:11:00 AM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 3891

UPDATE) Source Denies Alcatel Weighing Merger With U.K.'s General Electric Dow Jones Online News, Wednesday, November 18, 1998 at 05:12 LONDON -(Dow Jones)- A source close to Alcatel SA Wednesday denied a report the French telecommunications group has held talks with U.K. industrial and electronics giant General Electric Co. PLC about forming an alliance or merger. The U.K. newspaper the Guardian said GEC wants to diversify into the communications business and its Chief Executive Lord Simpson has held exploratory talks with potential French partners, including Alcatel. However, the source said Simpson has been in France investigating some sort of venture with another French industrial company, which the source declined to name. "For Alcatel, this is hot air, since GEC hasn't held any talk with the company," said a source close to the company. GEC and Alcatel already share equal stakes of 25% in their joint-venture Anglo-French engineering group Alstom (ALS), said the newspaper. The rest of this was floated in June. Analysts in Paris said GEC is far more likely to be considering a venture with recently privatized French defense-electronics group Thomson-CSF, in which Alcatel has a 16.4% stake. French state-owned industrial group Thomson SA holds a 43% stake in Thomson-CSF. The analysts said some of Thomson-CSF's activities would mesh well with the defense-electronics and satellite interests of the U.K. company. Such talk might explain the reported weekend meeting between Alcatel Chairman Serge Tchuruk, who is a Thompson-CSF director, and Simpson. An Alcatel spokesman declined to comment on the report. In London, no one at GEC was available to comment on the newspaper report. Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.