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Week 10, 2006
THE BEST SELLERS (recent popular articles):
1) The Herald: Why modern offices only let you work for 11 minutes [Encore plus sur l'étude comme quoi on ne peut travailler que 11 minutes d'affillée au bureau sans être dérangé.]
2) CNN/Business Traveler: Cellphones have the answer [La réponse à tout se trouve en appellant à partir de son téléphone portable.]
3) India Financing: 14th largest place in the world [On trouvera encore à dire sur le leasing en Inde.]
4) Slate/Moneybox: Indian steel and Egyptian cell phones [Comment réagir à l'OPA de Mittal sur Arcelor?]

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THE REGULARS: Summary
5) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Mardi Gras Returns [Premier carnaval après Katrina à la Nouvelle-Orléans.]
6) Puzzle: Stranded family [Un casse-tête.]
7) CNN/Business Traveler: Drama in the skies [La censure des films diffusés à bord pratiquée par les compagnies aériennes ne se justifie plus.
8) AUDIO/On the Media: Left out [Emission radio avec transcription, cette fois-ci sur les émissions politiques du dimanche matin aux E-U.]

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1) The Herald: Why modern offices only let you work for 11 minutes [Encore plus sur l'étude comme quoi on ne peut travailler que 11 minutes d'affillée au bureau sans être dérangé.]
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/53977-print.shtml

W hy modern offices only let you work for 11 minutes
BRIAN DONNELLY January 10 2006

It has been described as multi-tasking madness as office workers struggle to balance their normal workload with an increasing number of e-mails and other demands. New research has found that, instead of helping workers through the day, new technology can bring increased stress and disruption to busy staff. The study shows modern-day staff work for just 11 minutes before they are interrupted by an e-mail, phone call or a metaphorical tap on the shoulder from a colleague.

Researchers have calculated that interruptions consume an average of 2.1 hours of every working day, or 28% of the average person's routine. It has reached such an extent that workers are becoming locked in what was described as a mire of multi-tasking, and one expert said there had been a tenfold rise in the number of people suffering from what he called work-induced attention-deficit disorder. The two hours of lost productivity included not only unimportant interruptions and distractions, but also the recovery time associated with getting back on track.

Once people are interrupted, it takes an average of nearly half an hour to return to the original task, but some workers admit their concentration is ruined for the rest of the day.

The report, The Cost of Not Paying Attention, was written by a research team headed by Gloria Mark and Victor Gonzalez, of the University of California.
They studied a random sample of 36 office workers and found that the employees devoted an average of just 11 minutes to a project before the ping of an e-mail, the ring of the phone, or a verbal interruption from a manager or colleague pulled them in another direction.

Once they were interrupted, it took on average of 25 minutes to return to the original task, if they managed to do so at all that day. Workers in the study were juggling an average of 12 projects each, a situation one subject described as "constant, multi-tasking craziness". The five biggest causes of interruption were a colleague stopping to talk, being called away from the desk (or leaving voluntarily), arrival of new e-mail, doing another task on the computer, or a phone call.

Edward Hallowell, a leading psychiatrist, said he had seen 10 times more people in the number of patients with what he described as work-induced attention-deficit disorder than in recent years. Dr Hallowell said: "They complained that they were more irritable than they wanted to be. Their productivity was declining and they couldn't get organised." He has branded workers' compulsive use of mobiles, computers, and Blackberries as "screen-sucking".

Business leaders recognised that interruptions happen, but said they should be managed alongside regular workload. David Lonsdale, assistant director of CBI Scotland, said: "Interruptions, from within or outwith the workplace, can sometimes make it seem hard to get things done, particularly with the growth in use of new technology. "However, unexpected calls or queries do not necessarily have to disrupt the working day. Less urgent items can be done later, and those pop-up boxes and bells that signal the arrival of new e-mail can be disabled. Telephone calls can also be screened. "Constant questions from colleagues might suggest they have been given inadequate training or instruction from the outset."

Mary Czerwinski, a senior researcher at Microsoft, has been helping the computer giant design alternatives to current software products to allow workers to stay on task for longer periods, even as on-screen interruptions arrive.

In next-generation systems, interruptions are designed to be less intrusive, without flashes, pop-ups or pings. For example, e-mail alerts will appear on the periphery of a screen that is larger than today's standard, so that workers remain concentrated on their main task.

People such as Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, claims to stay focused by avoiding junk food and doing daily workouts. Although a serious multi-tasker and mobile phone fan, Ms Rice does not rely on e-mail or a hand-held computer, but carries her agenda in her head.

Donald Trump, the entrepreneur who once negotiated a book deal in 15 minutes, believes in slowing down and focusing when the office gets too frenetic. He said: "I will literally take a breath and allow things to settle a bit. I also set aside quiet time each morning and evening for reading and assessing."

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2) CNN/Business Traveler: Cellphones have the answer [La réponse à tout se trouve en appellant à partir de son téléphone portable.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/01/03/mobile.phones/index.html

Cell phones have the answer: Everything you wanted to know by text but were afraid to ask

(CNN) -- Ever been stumped by a question when you're on the road? The answer could now be in the palm of your hand. Most modern executives are never far away from cyber solutions, thanks to laptops, BlackBerrys and 3G or WAP-equipped cell phones.

But sometimes technology falls short, leaving users stranded outside hi-tech network coverage. This is where a new breed of cell phone "concierge" service using trusty text message technology comes in handy. Several operators have launched in recent months, claiming they can answer any question sent by simple SMS -- the short message service supported by virtually all cell phone networks.

In the U.S., these have now begun directly targeting business travelers following a deal between car rental firm Avis and mobile information providers AskMeNow. The question-answering services claim to be able to respond to any query from "why is the sky blue?" to more complex requests about hotels, transport or directions.

Among those offering text message services is leading Internet search engine Google, which provides U.S. cell phone users with help in the shape of directory listings, movie times, stock prices and even the locations of local pizza restaurants.

In Australia, the Mojoknows service claims it will answer any question by text message within 15 minutes. In the UK, AQA (short for "any questions answered") says it can do it in six. Users pay for the service with charges on their phone bill.

AskMeNow CEO Darryl Cohen said his firm's service, retailing at 49 cents an answer and drawing responses from a call center based in the Philippines, offers an indispensable resource for executives on the move. "By providing responses to virtually any question at any time from any location, AskMeNow is the ultimate business resource for any business person on the road," he said.

But these bold claims have raised the eyebrows of skeptics who have tried to stump the services with a particularly tough line of questioning. The New York Times put AskMeNow on the spot with the poser: "Does Franklin Delano Roosevelt deserve credit for ending the Depression?'' It received "an extensive but noncommittal response ... beginning, 'President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal fought the Great Depression on a number of fronts.'''

In the UK, the AQA service seems to have attracted a more salacious line of inquiry, reporting a significant surge in sex-related questions shortly before 11 p.m.

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Center for Monitoring of Indian Economy compiles data about Indian leasing volumes, which is carried as a part of India Leasing Yearbook published by the Association of Leasing and Financial Services Cos. The data compiled by the Center shows aggregate balance sheet value of leased and hired assets (though for balance sheet purposes, lease and hire-purchase transactions are distinguished, there is no material difference between the two - hence the volumes have been clubbed here) at about Rs. 261 billion (End March 1997). This is based on reporting by 226 companies, whereas the business, particularly hire-purchase, is spread amongst some 3000 large and small companies. Estimated outstanding business done by these firms is about Rs. 15 billion (at Rs. 5 million per such firm).

That apart, the data also excludes the massive annual volume of business by the Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC). IRFC is a hundred percent subsidiary of Indian Railways, and its leases are dedicated to the parent Railways only. Of late, almost entire floating stock acquisition by Railways is being acquired on lease from IRFC. The outstanding value of leases done by IRFC adds to about Rs. 120 billion.

Thus, the aggregate volume comes to about Rs. 396 billion, which is about USD 11 billion as per then-prevailing exchange rates.

USD 11 billion of outstanding volume cannot by itself give India a ranking in the London Financial Group data, since these rankings are based on incremental volume. However, a rough estimate of new business can be made from the above data (unfortunately, the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy data do not give any idea of new leasing and hire-purchase volume). Supposing 30% of the outstanding business of last year was paid, and there was a 20% growth in net business (as can be seen from the Chart above), there was a 50% new business, over the volume outstanding at the beginning of the year. Relative to the business at the end of the year, the incremental volume should have been about 33% (50/150).

Therefore the annual leasing volume in India is estimated at about USD 3.67 billion, on a rough and conservative estimate.

In London Financial Group data, this should put India at 12-13th place, close to Hong Kong. This would also be the third largest market in Asia, next only to Japan and Korea.

The only infirmity in the above ranking is that the London Financial Group data are not as of March 1997 - that, however, should not seriously disrupt the ranking of India, because other Asian markets in 1996-7 period have generally registered a negative growth.

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4) Slate/Moneybox: Indian steel and Egyptian cell phones [Comment réagir à l'OPA de Mittal sur Arcelor?]
http://www.slate.com/id/2136063/
moneybox/Commentary about business and finance.

Indian Steel and Egyptian Cell Phones: Do these products sound scary or great? Your answer says a lot about you.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Feb. 13, 2006, at 6:20 PM ET

The recycling of global capital works in strange ways. Every day, the developed world sends dollars and euros to the developing world in exchange for commodities, natural resources, and manufactured goods. And every day, the cash makes a round trip as foreigners buy assets in the United States and Europe.

The good folks in the West are generally happy to sell real estate to nouveau riche Arabs and Asians. After all, cash-flush foreigners generally pay top dollar. In 2004, Lakshmi Mittal, the acquisitive Indian steel baron, dished out $128 million for a residence in London. (And few of the bienpensant clucked when Mittal rented out Versailles for his daughter's wedding.) There's no clash of cultures and civilizations when it comes to real estate. Would you like to buy Pebble Beach? How about Rockefeller Center?

But when the purchase involves a corporation that produces an essential industrial product, that we-are-the-world comity disappears. Since January, when Mittal announced a hostile bid for Luxembourg-based steel company Arcelor, the French and Luxembourgians (Luxembourgeoisie?) have reacted harshly. On Jan. 29, Arcelor's board rejected Mittal's offer as unacceptable in every way. Arcelor's Runyonesque CEO, Guy Dolle, has sniffed that his steel is "perfume" while Mittal's product is like "eau de cologne." Thierry Breton, France's finance minister, fretted over the potential clash of civilizations that would ensue if Mittal were to emerge victorious. (Never mind that Mittal's company has its headquarters in Rotterdam, is owned by a man whose primary residence is in London, and has steel-making operations in the United States and Germany—but not in India.) In response, India's minister of commerce and industry, Kamal Nath, flung back: "This is an era of globalization, cross-border investment and liberalization, not one in which investors are judged by the color of their skin." Touché!

There is, as Nath suggests, a fair amount of nativism at work in the opposition to some of these deals. It's fine if those foreigners with the strange names and cuisines want to buy industrial castoffs. Few in the United States cared when a Chinese firm bought IBM's personal-computer business, which could no longer compete with Dell. And nobody squawked when Mittal bought International Steel Group, which had been cobbled together from a bunch of bankrupt steel companies. But now that overseas industrialists are starting to buy the good stuff, there's concern. Orascom, the Egyptian wireless phone company, last year bought a big stake in Italy's Wind. As the Wall Street Journal noted, in 2005, "companies from the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and other regions spent more than $42 billion on deals" in Europe, more than twice the 2004 figure. Western government officials and corporate executives are generally skeptical about the ability of Indians to manage sophisticated global steel companies, or of Egyptians to manage sophisticated global wireless-phone companies, or of Gulf Arabs' ability to manage sophisticated global logistics companies.

This prejudice is misplaced, even stupid. The consolidators emerging out of India, the Middle East, and Latin America are far more cosmopolitan and savvy than their European and American counterparts. The managers and entrepreneurs behind companies like Mittal, or Mexico's cement giant Cemex, or Egypt's Orascom, are the best and brightest those countries have to offer. They are buying companies run by Europeans and Americans who are, in many cases, certainly not the best and the brightest. Otherwise, their firms wouldn't be in such poor shape that they might need a foreign bailout. Egyptian managers may not inspire confidence. But then again, Italy hasn't exactly been a paragon of business genius, what with Parmalat, Fiat, and various banking scandals.

Americans shouldn't get too smug about the Europeans' outrage. We exhibit the same bias when our interests are challenged. We saw a variant of the nativist investment strain when the Chinese oil company CNOOC was bidding on Unocal. (Although, as is the case with everything else, Americans tended to see the deal through the lens of national security, not culture.) Today, the shareholders of Britain's P&O, which controls port operations in Newark, Miami, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, accepted a takeover bid from Dubai's DP World. I'm sure it will give some pause that a company controlled by an Arab government will run operations at several key U.S. ports.

But perhaps it won't. Americans are, in general, blasé about foreign ownership of U.S. assets. Where would we be if foreigners wouldn't buy our debt, after all? And, in recent years, a series of acquisitions of prime U.S. assets by a group of people we consider to be unsophisticated in the ways of management—Europeans—have worked out quite well. Chrysler, which was acquired by Germany's Daimler several years ago, is clearly the best off of the U.S. automakers.

Besides, many of these foreign entrepreneurs aren't exactly strangers. Along with dollars and Hollywood movies, management education is a great American export. One of the objections raised by Europeans against Mittal is that he has elevated his son Aditya—an arrogant, 30-year-old Wharton graduate—as the heir apparent.

So, Mittal is willing to place his future in the hands of a young, hotheaded heir with an MBA and global ambitions? Who are we to judge?

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5) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Mardi Gras Returns [Premier carnaval après Katrina à la Nouvelle-Orléans.]
http://teacher.scholastic.com

Mardi Gras Returns
By Ezra Billinkoff

Mardi Gras celebrations began this week in New Orleans, Louisiana, a sign that the City Below the Sea is getting back on its feet after the flooding and the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina late last summer.

Mardi Gras, which means "Fat Tuesday" in French, is the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Catholic season of Lent. Lent ends on Easter Sunday, when Christians celebrate the return of Jesus from the dead. In New Orleans this year, Mardi Gras is now also a symbol of the city's return to life.

The Mardi Gras parades this week signal the city's determination to get back to normal. The massive parades feature floats constructed by krewes, or teams of New Orleans residents. There are fewer floats at this year's toned-down Mardi Gras, but the spirits are high and the tone is more family-friendly than in the past.

Some of the floats bear reminders of the loss suffered because of Hurricane Katrina. One float, built by the all-female "Krewe of Muses," rolled down the street draped entirely in black, with swooshes of gray and white and decorative blue flowers. On the top, designers placed a banner reading, "We celebrate life, we mourn the past, we shall never forget."

Mardi Gras revelers (the people celebrating) traditionally wear purple, green, and yellow beads that represent justice, faith, and power. Normally, the streets are packed with partygoers in outrageous costumes and dozens of strings of beads around their necks. This year, when fewer than half of the New Orleans residents have returned to the flood-ravaged city, the crowds are smaller. Tourists usually make up a large part of the parade audience, but many are staying home this year.

"There's just not as many people in New Orleans anymore," Karen Giorlando, a resident said. "Now the parade is all about the kids. They're all stressed. They needed this."

'A Ways to Go'

Despite the smaller turnout and the toned-down parades, New Orleans residents feel good about this Mardi Gras celebration. "The message is, we're on our way back," said Arthur Hardy who publishes a Mardi Gras guide. "But we still have a ways to go."

While Mardi Gras is important to New Orleans, the city is taking other steps to get back on its feet. Within three months of Hurricane Katrina, an elementary school reopened, and now many others are doing the same. Hospitals have been slow to reopen, though, and some health-care officials fear there is now a shortage of hospital beds.

Residents are beginning to return and rebuild. "This is home," said Karry Causey, an airport employee. "This is where we wanted to be. This is where we will be."

There is plenty of clean up left to do in the city. Parts of New Orleans have not even been looked at for damage assessment. Some residents are frustrated with the city, state, and federal governments, which they say could be doing more. Some residents believe that Mardi Gras celebrations distract the city from rebuilding.

"I don't feel comfortable," said Carl Henry, a leader of one of the city's most popular krewes. "The money I would spend on trinkets, I would put to better use for me and my family. That's just my situation."

Still, some see the Mardi Gras ritual as important for a city that wants to return to its past greatness. "We're raring to go," said Blaine Kern, a floatmaker. "We're digging out and we want to show the world that we're ready to come out and come party."

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7) CNN/Business Traveler: Drama in the skies [La censure des films diffusés à bord pratiquée par les compagnies aériennes ne se justifie plus.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/02/24/oscars/index.html

Drama in the skies: Why airline movie edits won't win any Oscars

By Barry Neild for CNN
Monday, February 27, 2006 Posted: 1100 GMT (1900 HKT)

(CNN) -- Spielberg, Clooney and Witherspoon are all in the running, but one winner you won't see at this year's Academy Awards is the airline industry. Every year, thousands of plane passengers while away their journey with a movie -- and more often than not, the film has been edited specifically with in-flight entertainment in mind.

These celluloid snips, which occasionally render plotlines hilariously unintelligible, could be seen as an affront to directors and editors who have spent months crafting and fine-tuning their project, but few airlines are willing to take any chances.

In the days of overhead TV screens or projectors, the reasons for this were obvious: not all of the captive audience would be happy watching the same film. Steamy sex scenes or violent bloodbaths may be unsuitable for the young or squeamish. But, says Virgin Atlantic's in-flight entertainment director Lysette Gauna, in these days of multi-channel, seat back screens, airlines no longer have the excuse. "How can you take a director's work and re-edit it? It just becomes nonsensical, I wouldn't dare," she told CNN.

Virgin -- which with Qantas last year jointly scooped the World Airline Entertainment Association's best in-flight entertainment award -- was one of the first airlines to operate a no-edit policy on films shown on board its jets. "They are the same as you see at the cinema," she says. "I just think its good that people can get on a Virgin plane and see exactly the same film that they would on the ground. We'll be showing the Oscar nominees, and we're pretty sure they'll be very popular."

Airline disasters

"I've seen some terrible examples of editing, like the classic orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally or the crucial reveal scene in the Crying Game when you realize the woman is a man. I completely missed the point and came away thinking I'd seen an entirely different movie."

Films have been a fixture on aircraft since 1961, when TWA decided to cheer up a New York to San Francisco flight with the distinctly cheerless John Sturges melodrama "By Love Possessed."

Since then, virtually all genres of film have been screened in the sky, although for obvious reasons, movies featuring airline disasters have never really taken off -- except on Virgin. "The first film we ever showed was 'Airplane!'" says Gauna, referring the 1980 comedy that spoofs popular jet crash movies. Virgin has also screened "Alive", the 1993 film in which plane wreck survivors in the Andes snack on the corpses of fellow passengers, raising questions about the standards of airline catering.

Virgin does draw the line somewhere, however. "We didn't show 'Waterworld,' (the Kevin Costner film set in a waterlogged, future) -- but that's because it was just awful."

Says Gauna, her own personal in-flight award winners tend to be the one's that have passengers leaving tears on their inflatable pillows. "I tend to like a really good weepy, I like to look around the plane and see everyone crying at the same thing. I'm sure there'll be plenty of tears when we show 'Brokeback Mountain'."

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8) AUDIO/On the Media: Left out [Emission radio avec transcription, cette fois-ci sur les émissions politiques du dimanche matin aux E-U.]
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_021706_leftout.html

"Left Out"
February 17, 2006

BROOKE GLADSTONE: For some 10 million Americans, it's a Sunday morning ritual, not exactly church, but it does involve some very influential people holding forth. I mean, of course, the Sunday morning talk shows - NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS's "Face the Nation" and ABC's "This Week." Many more people tune into the networks' nightly newscasts, but, according to Paul Waldman of the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America, the Sunday shows play a unique role among our most powerful news outlets.

PAUL WALDMAN: For instance, the New York Times really sets the news agenda for almost the rest of the journalistic universe. The network newscasts in the evening have the largest audience. What the Sunday talk shows do is, more than any other news presentation, they set the parameters of debate - what kinds of views are inside that reasonable debate and outside that reasonable debate. If certain kinds of people are always outside of the debate, their views are not considered important enough, and then that spreads to other media. If everyone is debating, you know, how should we go about invading Iran? - just taking one hypothetical example that might occur in the future - as opposed to whether or not it's a good idea to invade Iran, then that debate ends up contributing greatly to the debate that's actually taking place in the country and in the halls of Congress, and the choices get constricted. And that, in the end, has consequences for policy.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: We tune into these shows to hear from the powerful, and so it's no surprise that these days the guest list tends to skew right. But this week, Waldman and Media Matters for America released a study claiming that the shows tilted a little right, even during the last four years of the Clinton administration. NBC wouldn't talk to us on tape, but did respond with a statement charging Waldman with faulty methodology. If he had looked at the guest list for "Meet the Press" during the first Clinton term, NBC says, he would have seen that at least that show actually featured more Democrats. Waldman shot back by accusing NBC of comparing apples to oranges, the apples being government officials on "Meet the Press" and the oranges being all guests, government officials and journalists, on all three of the Sunday shows. But even if you stick with apples, says Waldman, you'd see that there were more Republicans on "Meet the Press" under Bush than there were Democrats in the Clinton years.

PAUL WALDMAN: Well, the numbers of NBC for Clinton's first term taken in its entirety show that there was a 12 percentage point advantage for Democrats over Republicans. But if you look at "Meet the Press" for Bush's first term, which would be the relevant comparison, there's actually a 24-point advantage for Republicans over Democrats, twice as large. Now, that's one element is the administration and elected officials who get on the shows. But let's look at another element. One of the things that "Meet the Press" and "This Week" in particular feature is journalist roundtables. And what you find again and again and again on these roundtables is that you'll have neutral reporters matched up with conservative opinion-writers. Let's just take one illustration. This past October, there was an episode of "Meet the Press" that featured a roundtable, discussing Iraq, of David Broder, a centrist columnist for the Washington Post, Judy Woodruff, an anchor for CNN, William Safire, a conservative opinion-writer for the New York Times and David Brooks, another conservative opinion-writer for the New York Times. Now, what's missing from this picture? Well, of course, it's a progressive. And you see this again and again and again, that we have conservative opinion-writers, who are supposed to be balanced by neutral journalists, with no progressives anywhere. That's something that actually didn't change from the Clinton years to the Bush years, and, if anything, only got worse during the Bush years.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let me lay out an idea for you to respond to. This comes from Todd Gitlin, an avowedly liberal media critic. Since conservatives tend to be more zealous about their politics, conservatives play better on the air, and so for commercial reasons, television and radio talk will be disproportionately right-wing. Do you think that the media performance of liberals is to blame for this imbalance?

PAUL WALDMAN: You know, I've heard that argument from a lot of liberals, actually, that liberals' views are just too complex. They don't reduce as well to sound bites. That may be an argument that someone on a show like, say, "Hardball" or "Scarborough Country" might make. But that's not what the Sunday morning shows are about. They're not looking for the people with the snappiest sound bites or the loudest voices. They're supposed to be looking for people who are articulate and can speak to important pressing issues of the day and have some influence on how they're going to end up. And that actually brings us to another point, which is that you do see that some particular individuals tend to be on again and again and again. And that means that the debate is narrowed in any number of ways to the perspectives of those individuals. During this nine-year period, John McCain was on the Sunday shows 124 times. The person who comes in second is Joe Biden, at 80. So McCain is really the go-to guest. But there's something else that's interesting about McCain, which is that when he gets interviewed, he's almost always interviewed alone. Ordinarily when a senator comes on a show, he or she is usually balanced by a senator from the other party. Now, that suggests to me that they believe he's different than regular politicians, that he's a unique character, a maverick who doesn't need to be refuted from somebody else of another other party because he kind of stands aside from all that. But you can make a case that, you know, he's as conservative as most other Republicans and perhaps he should be refuted from someone from the other party.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Let's take it as read that John McCain inspires a certain veneration in the press that we won't go into here. But laying McCain aside for a moment, isn't the nature of these programs to be somewhat adversarial? I mean, if Tim Russert is, say, sitting with Dick Cheney, isn't he the one who's supposed to be asking the tough questions and not just give Cheney an opportunity to make a stump speech?

PAUL WALDMAN: Well that is, I think, how the shows would like to think of themselves. But I think if that's really what they're about, the Administration coming on to be interviewed and to air its views and to be questioned, then let's call it that and then let's not have anybody from the other party at all, because what's the point if the purpose of the shows is just to have the Administration state its case and then have a host ask questions about that case? But if they're going to claim to be having a debate in which both sides are represented, then they have an obligation to have something that, at least over time, looks like balance.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: If we take your point, that there are more conservatives and Republicans on these shows than perhaps there ought to be for a good balance and a fair airing of the debates, why?

PAUL WALDMAN: Why has it happened?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah.

PAUL WALDMAN: You know, that would require some speculation. And we don't make any allegation that the people who produce the show have some sort of sinister conspiracy at work, that are trying to advance a Republican agenda, but that habit of having neutral journalists providing balance for conservative writers suggests the possibility, at least, that the people who put together these shows have internalized this idea that reporters must be liberals. And so therefore, if you have a couple of people from the National Review on, you can balance them by having a couple of reporters. I can tell you that that has been the Republican strategy for around 40 years, to keep the media under constant pressure, accuse them of liberal bias at every turn. And, as a consequence, a lot of reporters, the way they deal with that is that they bend over backwards to show that they're not being liberal, and so they're tougher on Democrats. Now, I don't know if that's true with regard to the Sunday shows, but it's certainly true to one extent or another with a lot of reporters in Washington.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Paul, thank you very much.

PAUL WALDMAN: It's been my pleasure.

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9) New York Times Magazine: Sacré Cordon Bleu! [Un extrait des mémoirs de Julia Child, la femme qui a fait découvrir au grand public américain les joies de la cuisine française.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/19food.html

February 19, 2006
Food

Eat, Memory: Sacré Cordon Bleu!
By JULIA CHILD with ALEX PRUD'HOMME

By late 1950, I felt ready to take my final examination and earn my diplôme from the Cordon Bleu in Paris. But when I asked Mme. Brassart, the school's director, to schedule the test — politely, at first, then with an increasing insistence — my requests were met with stony silence. The truth is that Mme. Brassart and I got on each other's nerves. She seemed to think that awarding a student a diploma was like inducting them into some kind of secret society; as a result, the school's hallways were filled with an air of petty jealousy and distrust. From my perspective, Mme. Brassart lacked professional experience, was a terrible administrator and tangled herself up in picayune details and politics. Because of its exalted reputation, the Cordon Bleu's pupils came from all over the globe. But the lack of a qualified and competent head was hurting the school — and could damage the reputation of French cooking, or even France herself, in the eyes of the world.

I was sure that the little question of money had something to do with Mme. Brassart's evasiveness. I had taken the "professional" course in the basement rather than the "regular" (more expensive) course upstairs, which she had recommended; I never ate at the school; and she didn't make as much money out of me as she would have liked. It seemed to me that the school's director should have paid less attention to centimes and more attention to her students, who, after all, were — or could be — her best publicity.

After waiting and waiting for my exam to be scheduled, I sent Mme. Brassart a stern letter in March 1951, noting that "all my American friends and even the U.S. ambassador himself" knew I had been slaving away at the Cordon Bleu, "morning, noon and night." I insisted that I take the exam before I left on a long-planned trip to the United States in April. If there was not enough space at the school, I added, then I would be happy to take the exam in my own well-appointed kitchen.

More time passed, and still no response. I was good and fed up and finally spoke to Chef Bugnard, my professor, about the matter. He agreed to make inquiries on my behalf. Lo and behold, Mme. Brassart suddenly scheduled my exam for the first week in April. Ha! I continued to hone my technique, memorize proportions and prepare myself in every way I could think of.

On the big day, I arrived at the school, and they handed me a little typewritten card that said, "Write out the ingredients for the following dishes, to serve three people: oeufs mollets; côtelettes de veau en surprise; crème renversée au caramel."

I stared at the card in disbelief.

Did I remember what an oeuf mollet was? No. How could I miss that? (I later discovered that it was eggs that have been coddled and then peeled.) How about the veau "en surprise"? No. (A sautéed veal chop with duxelles, or hashed mushrooms, on either side, overlayed with ham slices and all wrapped up in a paper bag — the "surprise" — that is then browned in the oven.) Did I remember the exact proportions for caramel custard? No.

Zut alors, and flûte!

I was stuck, and had no choice but to make everything up. I knew I would fail the practical part of the exam. As for the written exam, I was asked how to make fond brun, how to cook green vegetables and how to make sauce béarnaise. I answered them fully and correctly. But that didn't take away the sting.

I was furious at myself. There was no excuse for not remembering what a mollet was or, especially, the details of a caramel custard. I could never have guessed at the veau en surprise, though, as the paper wrapping was just a lot of tomfoolery — the kind of gimmicky dish a little newlywed would serve up for her first dinner party to épater the boss's wife. Caught up in my own romanticism, I had focused on learning far more challenging fare — filets de sole à la Walewska, poularde Toulousaine, sauce Vénetienne. Woe!

There were no questions about complicated dishes or sauces, no discussion about which techniques and methods I'd use. Instead, they wanted me to memorize basic recipes taken from the little Cordon Bleu booklet, a publication written for beginner cooks that I had hardly bothered to look at. This exam was far too simple for someone who had devoted six months of hard work to cooking school, not to mention countless hours of her own time in the markets and behind the stove.

My disgruntlement was supreme, my amour-propre enraged, my bile overboiling. Worst of all, it was my own fault.

I despaired that the school would ever deign to grant me a certificate. Me, who could pluck, flame, empty and cut up a whole chicken in 12 minutes flat! Me, who could stuff a sole with forcemeat of weakfish and serve it with a sauce au vin blanc such as Mme. Brassart could never hope to taste the perfection of! Me, the supreme mistress of mayonnaise, hollandaise, cassoulets, choucroutes, blanquettes de veau, pommes de terre Anna, souflée Grand Marnier, fonds d'artichauts, onions glacées, mousse de faisan en gelée, balantines, galantines, terrines, pâtés, laitues braisées . . .me, alas!

Later that afternoon, I slipped down to the Cordon Bleu's basement kitchen by myself. I opened the school's booklet, found the recipes from the examination — oeufs mollets with sauce béarnaise, côtelettes de veau en surprise and crème renversée au caramel — and whipped them all up in a cold, clean fury. Then I ate them.

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10) Reuters: Study says global spread of English threatens UK [Une étude indique que ce n'est plus un avantage d'être de langue maternelle anglaise.]
http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=1094508&src=UK_DskTopTkr/GetContent

Study says global spread of English threatens UK
Tue Feb 21, 2006 04:07 PM GMT
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By Chris Johnson

LONDON (Reuters) - The dominance of English as the world's top language -- until recently an advantage to both Britain and the United States -- is now beginning to undermine the competitiveness of both nations, according to a major research report. The report commissioned by the British Council says monolingual English graduates "face a bleak economic future" as multilingual competitors flood into the workforce from all corners of the globe.

A massive increase in the number of people learning English is under way and likely to peak at around 2 billion in the next decade, according to the report entitled "English Next". More than half of all primary school children in China now learn English and the number of English speakers in India and China -- 500 million -- now exceeds the total number of mother-tongue English speakers elsewhere in the world. These new polyglots, and the companies that employ them, have significant competitive advantages over their monoglot rivals, including a vital understanding of different cultures, in a world faced with rapid globalisation.

"The competitive advantage of speaking English is ebbing away," said the author of the report, linguistic consultant David Graddol. "Once everyone speaks English, advantage can only be maintained by having something else -- other skills, such as speaking several languages. "At a corporate level, the UK and U.S. economies have been enjoying a huge benefit from having so many English speakers elsewhere in the world," he told Reuters on Tuesday. "They can outsource overseas to India, for example, allowing them to cut costs and boost growth."

But Graddol said there were mounting disadvantages for U.S. and British companies if they stayed monolingual. Companies from other countries could use exactly the same methods to cut costs. And those foreign competitors could also trade and take orders in other languages. "We know from trade associations that small and medium-sized British firms are losing a lot of business because they can't even answer calls from abroad on the switchboard," he said. "Calls don't get to the right people because the telephone operators don't have the languages needed."

Around 30 percent of the British population speaks a language other than English, but about half of these people have that other language as a mother tongue, Graddol said. In the United States, 22 percent of the population speaks a language other than English, mainly Spanish, and many of these people have Spanish as their first language, figures from the U.S. Modern Language Association show.

British higher education may already be suffering from being monolingual, Graddol suggests. The number of foreign, particularly Chinese, students entering UK universities was falling as colleges in other parts of the world offered courses in English at lower cost, he said. English-language teaching now earns Britain up to 1.3 billion pounds directly and other education-related exports bring in a further 10 billion pounds a year, the report said.

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11) The Economist: Citizenship [Sur le nouveau test de naturalisation au R-U.]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5116142
Citizenship: Quizzical

Nov 3rd 2005
From The Economist print edition
Britain tests its immigrants—and the notion of Britishness

AS THOUGH Britain were not hard enough on immigrants, it began this week to subject some of them to a multiple-choice exam. The idea is to test whether new arrivals are prepared for life in a wet country on the outskirts of Europe. It's a challenge, with a 75% pass mark and a long list of potential questions. But the test itself is simple, compared with the arduous task the country has been forced to perform: explaining itself to outsiders.

Other countries' quizzes reveal a breezy confidence about what their nations stand for. America tests new citizens by drawing questions from a sample list of 100 that is heavy on patriotism and constitutional principle. Seven questions are about the flag. Canada's test stresses civic duty, defined in boy-scout fashion: “Give an example of how you can show responsibility by participating in your community.”

Britain's effort is hesitant by comparison. Would-be citizens are tested on three chapters of a booklet, “Life in the United Kingdom”, which is so measured as to be almost apologetic. Two potential questions: how much less are women paid than men? And how many young people have taken illicit drugs? (The answers are 20% and about half, “if sometimes only as an experiment”). The section on politics describes the threat to civil servants' independence and explains the word “spin”. The closest thing to patriotism is an assertion that the nation “works reasonably well”.

Why the lack of patriotic certainties? Sir Bernard Crick, who wrote two chapters of the booklet, explains that the national culture is poorly defined, thanks to the lack of revolutionary heritage or a constitution. Britishness, he says, consists mostly of living in Britain. Instead of ideals, the nation has (unwritten) rules. “If you spill a stranger's drink by accident,” trainee citizens are told on page 101, “it is good manners (and prudent) to offer to buy another.”

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12) Rendez-vous France.com: Interview with David Sedaris [Entretien avec l'humoriste américain David Sedaris, responsable de l'engouement américain avec Picard Surgelés.]
http://www.rendezvousfrance.com/sedaris.html

Some years ago, David Sedaris decided to move to Paris. "It was like taking off a heavy coat," he says. "I was not aware of it in New York or Chicago, but I always had my eyes out for danger. Not here." The author of the best-selling Me Talk Pretty One Day, Barrel Fever, and Naked, now lives in Paris a good part of the year. He has found a vast and beautiful apartment on the Left Bank, under the protective shadow of the Sorbonne, in a very "BoBo" neighborhood - full or bourgeois bohemians. His latest book, Me Talk Pretty One Day (Little Brown), stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for over 20 weeks. His inspiration and field of exploration come from his personal experiences.
Sedaris, 43, has kept voluminous journals and first started reading them at friends' parties, in Chicago. He then moved to New York, where he held a series of jobs, including being an elf at Macy's, at Christmas. In 1993, Ira Glass, producer of the National Public Radio show This American Life, asked him if he'd like to read one of his pieces on the air. The Sedaris cult started that winter. We recently met him in Paris where he is beginning to be a celebrity despite his limited - but original - command of the French language.

Q. How did you decide to move to Paris ?
A. I would come to France in the summer with my boyfriend and stop in Paris. I love to shop more than anything, I love to speak French, so I thought it would be good to live here. There are new words to learn. I was having such a lovely time here that I said "Let's buy an apartment." In New York, if you buy an apartment, your maintenance fee is something like $2,000. Here, I pay $125.

Q. How did the experience turn out ?
A. I like being in a foreign land, I like not being responsible for anything. I can't vote. I like the feeling of not belonging. I think one can become French, but one can't ever be French. It is not hard to become an American. It involves paperwork. But even with the paperwork, I could not become French. But I have a place, I go to the movies each day. It is a great place to be.

Q. How your perception of French life changed?
A. In the US, I understand what's going on. In France, I don't. I don't understand, for instance, why people go on strike all the time. But I like the work involved in understanding what's going on. In America, you grow up hearing that it is the land of freedom, but you go outside and you realize it is not true. Also, I am delighted by so many things, in France. I went to the dentist. For the first time in 13 years I could afford it. It cost me $40. I went to the eye doctor. It took me 5 minutes. In New York, I waited for 5 hours for a kidney stone.

Q. What do you like best in your Parisian life?
A. I have never been afraid here. It is like taking off a heavy coat. I was not aware of it in New York or Chicago. I always had my eyes out for danger. Not here. It is so beautiful here, such a beautiful place. I am waiting for someone to tell me "You don't deserve this ". Beauty does not pay the bills but it shakes you. Also, you'd never find movies like here. I never run out of choices.

Q. What difference moving from New York has made in your work?
A. By the time I left New York, I did not have much to complain about. But I work better when I struggle against something. Here, I have to struggle for everything. The language makes everything a struggle. Parisians love exact change. I was frightened at the grocery store the first time I was asked something and I did not understand. The first movie I saw here was Saving Private Ryan. I gave 50F and the guy said "51F because we charge more for tourists." ! I have to go on TV and I am terrified. I don't understand if the show is funny, interesting or what.

Q. How do you see French people now that you live among them?
A. Americans want to believe that the French are really nasty. They assume the French are really awful. They are desperate to have their myths about France repeated because something frightens them about the French. But Parisians must be like people in SoHo, in Manhattan : after a while they get tired of people with maps, five abreast. But Parisians can be strange. I went to a café and ordered coffee at 6pm and the waiter said to me "Coffee, finished" in English. The impulse is to say the French are assholes but my boyfriend Hugh has many friends and he can counter that. If I am not critical enough, I will be seen as a francophile and that's scary! American francophiles are scary.

Q. Was living in Paris a dream of yours ?
A. No. But there is a lot of stuff to buy here, so much stuff. I do my Christmas shopping in September, here. I go to flea markets. Any store you go you'll find something. I thought if I bought a lot, people would love me in the stores! But I like living in Paris because I can smoke.

Q. What do you smoke ?
A. Kool cigarettes ! I smoke them because I am the only white person in America to smoke them, and no one borrows cigarettes from me.

Q. What about food ?
A. I wanted to eat horse meat the moment I was here. I finally had it last night. It was good. There is an open air market just up the street. Hugh knows the people, the products. I love neighborhood supermarkets. I love going to Shopi [a sort of French 7-11] on Sundays. I love standing in a very long line. I think the best job in France is to work at a cash register. They don't do anything, don't even bag your stuff. I love a chain called Picard Surgelés. That would be making a lot of money in the U.S. Here, when people bag, they are so slow. It is as if they need to color coordinate.

Q. Do you read French newspapers ?
A. I only read Voici [a French National Enquirer]. I discover new words I would not find anywhere else, like "mangeuse d'hommes". I love it when on the cover they have "publication judiciaire" when they have libeled someone. Growing up, I thought France was the top of sophistication. It is great to find gossip magazines and bad taste. But I have the reverse experience when I go to a movie and I see previews of American films: I want to get up and say I am sorry.

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Indian Leasing: Major components

In this section, we take a look at the major constituents of the leasing industry in India: the lessors and the lessees.

Lessors:

1. Specialized leasing companies:

There are about 400-odd large companies which have an organizational focus on leasing, and hence, are known as leasing companies.

Till recently, most of them were diversified financial houses, offering several fund-based and non-fund based financial services. However, recent SEBI rules on bifurcation of fund-based and non-fund based activities has resulted into hiving-off of merchant banking divisions of these entities. Most of these companies also offer hire-purchase activities, and some of them might have a consumer finance division as well.

These companies are known, in regulator's jargon, as non-banking financial companies, or NBFCs for short. The terms NBFCs includes several other financial concerns too, and all such companies are regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. There were no entry barriers to leasing business till recently, but the January 1997 amendments to the RBI law now require any non-banking finance company to have a prior registration with the RBI, and the conditions of registration virtually amount to authorization by the RBI.

2. Banks and bank-subsidiaries:

Till 1991, there were some ten bank subsidiaries active in leasing, and over-active in stock-investing. The latter variety was ravaged in the aftermath of the 1992 securities scam.

In Feb., 1994, the RBI allowed banks to directly enter leasing. So long, only bank subsidiaries were allowed to engage in leasing operations, which was regarded by the RBI as a non-banking activity. However, the 1994 Notification saw an essential thread of similarity between financial leasing and traditional lending.

Though State Bank of India, Canara Bank etc have set up leasing activity, it is not currently at a scale to make any difference on the leasing scenario. This is different from the rest of the World, where banks are front-runners in leasing markets.

3. Specialized Financial institutions:

There is a wide variety of financial institutions at the Central as well as the State level in India. Apart from the apex financial institutions, viz., the Industrial Development Bank of India, the Industrial Finance Corporation of India, and the ICICI, there are several financing agencies devoted to specific causes, such as sick-industries, tourism, agriculture, small industries, housing, shipping, railways, roads, power, etc. In most States too, there are multiple financing agencies for generic or focussed cause.

Most of these institutions are using the lease instrument along with traditional financing instruments. Significantly, the ICICI was one of the pioneers in Indian leasing. At State level also, financial institutions are active in leasing business.

4. One-off lessors :

Some of the companies engaged in some other business which gives them huge taxable profits, have resorted to one-off leasing on a casual basis to defer their taxes. These people are interested only in leasing of high-depreciation items, preferably those entitled to 100% depreciation. The major items eligible for 100% depreciation are gas cylinders, certain energy-saving devices, pollution control devices etc. Severe scrutiny by revenue officials into lease transactions at the time of assessment has dampened the enthusiasm in this line of leasing activity, however it carries on. Mostly such lease transactions are syndicated, at times even funded, by active players in leasing markets.

5. Manufacturer-lessors :

This part of the lessor-industry is in highly under-grown form in India, for simple reasons. Vendor leasing is a product of competition in the product market. As competition forces the manufacturer to add value to his sales, he finds the best way to sell the product is to sell it without the buyer having to pay for it instantly. Product markets so far for most durables were oligopolistic, and good products used to sell even otherwise at a premium. With the economy decisively moving towards market orientation, competition has become inevitable, and competition brings in its wake sales-aid tools. Hence, the potential for vendor leasing is truly great.

Presently, vendors of automobiles, consumer durables, etc. have alliances or joint ventures with leasing companies to offer lease finance against their products. However, there is no devoted vendor leasing of the type popular in most of the advanced markets, where a specific leasing company or leasing program takes exclusive charge of a vendor's products.

The lessees

1. Corporate customers with very high credit ratings: These essentially look at leasing to leverage against assets which are otherwise not bankable, or for pure junk financing.

2. Public sector undertakings: This market has witnessed a very rate of growth in the past. With budgetary grants to the PSUs coming to a virtual halt, there is an increasing number of both centrally as well as State-owned entities which have resorted to lease financing. Their requirements are usually massive.
3. Mid-market companies: The mid-market companies, that is, companies with reasonably good creditworthiness but with lower public profile have resorted to lease financing basically as an alternative to bank/institutional financing, which to them is time-consuming and tedious.
4. Consumers: Retail funding for consumer durables was frowned-upon at one point of time, but recent bad experience with corporate financing has focussed attention towards consumer durables which incidentally, is all the all-time favorite of financiers World-over. Most of the larger companies have expressed interest in consumer funding, with ticket size going as low as Rs. 5000.
5. Car customers: Car leasing World-over is a very big market, and the same is true for India. So long, most car leases were plain-vanilla financial leases but one now finds few instances of value-added car lease services also being offered.
6. Commercial vehicles: Commercial vehicles customers have always relied upon funding by hire-purchase companies. The customer profile ranges from large fleet owners to individual truckers.
7. Earth-moving machinery customers: These customers have also traditionally relied upon lease financing. Their requirements are generally large - each excavators costs more than Rs. 25 lacs. The income-stream is based on contracts they have - at times, the income generation may be sporadic, or the need might itself be temporary. In fact, operating leases would have been ideal in this market, but they are yet to be launched to any serious degree.
8. Govt. deptts. and authorities: One of the latest entrants in leasing markets is the Govt. itself. The Deptt. of Telecommunications of the Central Govt. took the lead by floating tenders for lease finance worth about Rs. 1000 crores. In its reforms programme, India has limits to the extent to which it can resort to deficit financing, and leasing is easily going to appeal to the Govt. , if not for cost reasons, at least for the fact that it will not feature in national accounts as a commercial financing. As a spin-off, it might even help reducing the reported deficit, as the Govt. resorts to what is loved World-over as a tool of off-balance-sheet financing.

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Feb 9th 2006 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
BNP Paribas's swoop for Italy's BNL is unlikely to start a rush

THE move was quick, bold and unexpected. On February 3rd BNP Paribas, France's second-biggest bank by assets, declared that it was buying a 48% stake in Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) and would bid for the rest. The offer values BNL, Italy's sixth-biggest bank, at about €9 billion ($10.8 billion). If approved by regulators, this will be the biggest foreign acquisition ever by a French bank and the fifth-largest cross-border takeover in European banking (see chart).

BNL has been seen as a takeover target for three years, but BNP Paribas was never thought to be a potential buyer. Last year Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), which owns 15% of BNL, tried to buy the lot but hardly received enthusiastic encouragement from the Italian authorities. Unipol, an Italian insurer, then tried to play the national white knight. Its bid was eventually rejected by the central bank last week. When Unipol and 12 other shareholders were ready to sell, the opportunity was too good to let pass, says Baudouin Prot, chief executive of BNP.

Mr Prot's strike shows the attraction of Italy's banking market. It looks ripe for consolidation: the top five banks have a share of only 35%, against 72% in France and 80% in Britain. It ought to be profitable: Italians save more than the European Union average and pay higher bank fees. BNP's Italian operations, in consumer finance, insurance and corporate finance, already produce revenue of €750m a year.

Better still, following last year's battles over both BNL and Banca Antonveneta, the ninth-biggest bank, the country is now more open to foreign buyers. The rumpus over Antonveneta, which is now being bought by the Netherlands' ABN Amro, led to the resignation in December of Antonio Fazio, governor of the Bank of Italy, and his replacement by Mario Draghi, formerly of Goldman Sachs. Under Mr Fazio it was all but impossible even for foreigners with a big stake in Italian banks to buy control; those without did not even try.

The French bank's swoop is the biggest and latest of many purchases since it was forged from Banque Nationale de Paris and Paribas in 2000. BNP Paribas has since spent €13 billion on takeovers, mainly on smallish retail-banking deals. Last year it bought 14 companies, including Commercial Federal, an American retail bank, for $1.4 billion. “If the opportunity to buy BNL had not come up we would have continued our baby-step strategy,” says Mr Prot.

Despite BNP's bold move, a series of big cross-border deals looks improbable. No doubt BNP Paribas's domestic rivals, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale, would like a coup of their own. So might the thwarted BBVA, which is selling its stake in BNL to BNP Paribas. The trouble is that few big banks are worth buying. Analysts at Merrill Lynch say the number of possible prey has dwindled further now that ABN Amro, Germany's Commerzbank and Austria's Erste Bank have become buyers.

Surely, though, Italy is now open for business? After all, several foreign banks already own slices of Italian institutions. Spain's Grupo Santander holds 8% of Sanpaolo IMI, the third-biggest bank. ABN Amro has 9% of Capitalia, the number four. Crédit Agricole owns 18% of Banca Intesa, the largest. Italian banks are not huge: even Intesa, with a market capitalisation of €28 billion, would be no match for the top dogs of France, Germany and Spain. However, a bid for one of Italy's biggest and best would test its new openness: BNL is no giant and no jewel. Moreover, the top banks are subject to fairly tight shareholder pacts, which leaves only small regional banks as easy meat.

If deals across borders happen, they are likely to be takeovers of small banks by bigger institutions. Mergers of near-equals have rarely progressed beyond initial flirtations and have not always been happy experiences. The products of one or two have even been spoken of as takeover targets themselves. But none are so alluring as to be leapt upon à la française.

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15) The Economist: Closing the borders to business [Protectionisme européen avec Mittal et ENEL.]
http://www.economist.com

Closing the borders to business
Mar 1st 2006
From The Economist Global Agenda

A wave of cross-border mergers is sweeping across Europe. But as globalisation and no-holds-barred capitalism gather strength on the continent, France and others are trying to stiffen the barriers to economic integration on “strategic” grounds. The latest example of this is the attempt by Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, to prevent an Italian bid for Suez by merging it with another French utility

FREE-SPENDING visitors are sometimes shocked by Paris’s famously surly waiters. France has usually greeted foreign firms that have tried to acquire French rivals with the same lack of grace. The latest affront to Europe’s free-marketeers came on Saturday February 25th as France sought to undermine a potential bid for Suez, a French electric and water utility, by Enel, an Italian rival. To avert a hostile bid from the Italian firm, the French government announced that it would seek to broker a merger between Suez and state-owned Gaz de France, creating a group with annual sales of €64 billion ($76 billion).

Italian politicians were outraged. The finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, was despatched to Brussels to plead Italy's case at the European Commission. Romano Prodi, leader of Italy's opposition and a former president of the commission, talked of the “need to strengthen national businesses” in response to the French move. And other Italian politicians raised the possibility of a merger between Enel and Eni, a state-controlled oil and gas company, to create a huge Italian counterpart to the new French group.

France’s attempts to create an energy colossus come just days after Spain’s government made clear that a bid by E.ON, a huge German gas and electricity provider, for Endesa, a Spanish utility, was unwelcome. The German firm’s €29 billion offer could thwart the Spanish government’s preferred deal of a tie-up between Endesa and Gas Natural, another Spanish energy firm. From Madrid's point of view, the advantage of an all-Spanish transaction is that it would create a “national champion” poised to reap the benefits of the full liberalisation of Europe’s energy markets in 2007. No matter that Endesa itself opposes a merger with its domestic rival.

These are not isolated cases. Across Europe, sentiment towards cross-border deals appears to be souring, just as the pace of deal-making gathers pace. More and more countries are resorting to economic nationalism (though they may prefer to call it patriotism) which runs counter to the liberalising forces and open markets that the European Union is supposed to foster.

This recent rise in protectionism threatens the boom in cross-border deals. The value of mergers and acquisitions in Europe topped $1 trillion in 2005, a height not seen since the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000. And around a third of the cash went on cross-border deals, a doubling of the level in 2004. The beginning of this year has seen a flurry of big international transactions. Competition is bound to suffer if the opportunity to do business across Europe’s national boundaries is stymied by governments blocking deals or engineering mergers at home.

The Suez case is not the first this year in which France demonstrated its aversion to cross-border activity when local interests are targeted. Its government reacted with unbridled hostility to Mittal Steel’s bid for Arcelor, a steel producer formed by the merger of leading steelmakers from France, Luxembourg and Spain. France’s government has no stake in Arcelor; nor has it any regulatory role to play. Nevertheless, it still considers Arcelor a corporate jewel that must be protected. Luxembourg, which does at least have a stake in Arcelor, fell into line with France, pledging to do what it could to stop the takeover.

Though Mittal still hopes to win Arcelor’s hand, the prospect of politically charged takeover battles has deterred many a cross-border bidder in the past and may make foreign firms more wary in the future. Last year, rumours of a takeover by PepsiCo of Danone, a French dairy giant, unleashed another torrent of vitriol from leading French politicians. The American suitor rapidly backed off.

As protectionism gathers strength, other countries are preparing to raise the drawbridge against unwelcome foreign interest in “strategic” assets. France’s rebuff to Enel and recent French efforts to allow companies to use “poison pill” defences against hostile acquisitions have prompted Italy to consider bolstering its own laws on takeover defences. That comes as bad news for those who had hoped Italy was starting to embrace integration, especially after the sacking as central-bank governor of Antonio Fazio, who for many years had blocked foreign takeovers of Italian banks.

Germany’s resistance to foreign takeovers was weakened by Vodafone’s gigantic acquisition of Mannesmann in 2000 following a bitter takeover battle, but the country is still reluctant to roll out the red carpet. Volkswagen is protected from foreign buyers by a law which bureaucrats in Brussels are trying to have overturned. Poland, meanwhile, has shown that newcomers to the EU can be just as obstructive as the old guard. To the displeasure of the European Commission, Poland’s government has gone to court to block the takeover of Germany’s HVB by Italy’s Unicredit, because it involves the merger of two Polish subsidiaries that the government is against.

The protectionist trend is defended as a legitimate means of shielding industries vital to the national interest. Last year, France published a list of 11 sectors in which it intended to reserve the right to veto takeovers on grounds of national security. Neither energy nor steel featured on the list, but the government has obviously decided that these, too, now merit intervention on security grounds. Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s internal-market commissioner, is none too happy about this sort of thing, though it is not clear what he can do to stop it.

Under EU law, member states have the right to block foreign takeovers only if they threaten a plural media, public security or a country’s financial system. In arranging a marriage between Gaz de France and Suez, the French government has pre-empted a bid from Enel. This helps it to avoid formally having to block the bid by invoking EU law on public-security grounds. It also leaves the European Commission powerless to intervene. Franco Frattini, vice-president of the commission, said this week that the Suez/Gaz de France tie-up did not violate EU law but was “a blow to the spirit of the common European market”.

Naturally, France is not averse to its own companies buying overseas. In the past year, for example, Pernod Ricard struck a big deal to buy Britain’s Allied Domecq, and France Telecom bought Spain’s Amena. Spanish firms, assisted by tax laws, have also shopped extensively abroad. Britain is one of only a handful of countries that rise above such double standards; it almost always welcomes interlopers from abroad.

They do it in America, too

The latest raising of the French drawbridge comes as something similar is taking place on the other side of the Atlantic, though for different reasons. Earlier this year, DP World, a company controlled by Dubai’s government, successfully bid for Britain’s P&O and is set to take over the running of its network of ports around the world, including several in America. But Dubai has been hit by a blast of hostility from American legislators. Some of them are genuinely worried about the security implications of American ports falling into the hands of a state-owned firm from an Arab country; others are using such concerns as cover for economic nationalism. DP and the White House, which supported the deal, have agreed to a delay in its implementation in order to give Congress more time to scrutinise it.

As in France, this American antipathy towards a foreign takeover is not a one-off. Last year, CNOOC, a state-controlled Chinese oil firm, scuttled away from Unocal, an American company it had hoped to buy, after opposition to the deal in Congress reached fever pitch. Free-marketeers worry that such cases are establishing a dangerous pattern that will make it easier for those who oppose cross-border deals to block them in future.

Many of America’s fears about foreigners can be traced back to the terror attacks of September 11th 2001. In France’s case, its political elite is still haunted by last year’s rejection of the proposed European constitution by the country’s voters, many of whom saw the document as entrenching economic liberalisation and globalisation, which they blamed for their problems. The French government, once a driving force behind European integration, is now trying to roll back EU powers in a number of areas. Reports this week, for instance, suggested that Paris wants to wrest back from Brussels control over certain decisions on taxation. Defenders of free markets and economic integration have a big battle on their hands.