30/09/2002

Vivendi Universal’s strength lies in the multitude of its companies it owns; it employs 381,000 people in over 100 countries, 80,000 of whom work in the multimedia and communications sectors.
Télecom and the Internet, multimedia publishing, music, the environment, without forgetting television and cinema (20,000 alone), the French group’s appetite knows no limits. Not even the collapse of the new technologies financial bubble as of March 2000, assuages VU’s hunger for acquisitions.
On the contrary, since 17 December 2001, Jean-Marie Messier has been thinking about a big new business: the televisions owned by the US Networks group, that Vivendi bought for $10 billion (Euros10 bn).
This company is run by Barry Diller, a former head of Paramount and Fox, who takes command of the new subsidiary called Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE). The deal is too onerous for VU’s coffers, especially in the wider context of a general economic slowdown that is further aggravated by the events of 11 September 2001. And above all, by Jean-Marie Messier’s shock announcement during a press conference that "the cultural exception is dead" – this is the verbal equivalent of dropping a bomb on France.
It must be mentioned that Messier had just moved to New York and for a year, had been gathering his troops for meetings in an Orlando theme park owned by Universal. Messier’s unexpectedly sharp statement caused a chain reaction in the press and all of France’s leading representatives from the world of culture turned against him. The President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac even mentioned the issue on television last January, and was obviously worried about the danger of seeing the French crown jewels fall into foreign hands.
That was the beginning of the end for the flamboyant manager whose cruel privilege it is to announce, in March 2002, that VU lost Euros13.6 billion in 2001, a record in the history of French finance and industry , and this was further aggravated by debts of Euros 19 billion for VU’s multimedia and communications sectors.
Cornered, Jean-Marie Messier makes yet another mistake when Now at bay, Jean-Marie Messier managed to commit yet another mistake when, on 16 April he fires Pierre Lescure, the president and symbol of Canal+, and this unleashes a strike amongst the television station’s employees that is broadcast live. The media events that he used so well to his advantage when making his ascent now go against Messier with a boomerang effect: angry protests during his appearance before the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA), shareholders in uproar at the General Board Meeting of 24 April, widespread anxiety amongst other French industrialists, alarming data published by stock exchange brokerage agencies, VU shares in a downward spiral. The axe falls on 30 June: the board forces Jean-Marie Messier to resign just as Vivendi Universal hovers on the brink of bankruptcy.