The French business news is dominated by three separate stories today. Yesterday the former CEO of a Thales division (THEC) gave an interview with Le Monde (translated here) where he discussed how Thales has been bribing its way to contracts all over the place - including the Nice Tramway, a project which frustrates every inhabitant of Nice that I know. The EU Referendum blog has a detailed translation and commentary and I see no reason to try and better it, save to say that the bribery scandals surrounding the Nice Tramway project appear to have included just about every relevant local politician and quite a few civil servants.
In fact this would seem to have been standard practise for contracts in almost all of the world excluding Australia, New Zealand, North America and "parts of Europe". France, however is most definitely not in the bribefree part of Europe though. The rumours of French municipal corruption have always been there but until recently it has been rare to find anyone actually talking about it publically, let alone someone actually doing anything about it. Another point made is that according to Mr. Josserand is that Thales has effectively been forced to bribe its way to contracts almost everywhere and claims (and I personally see no reason to doubt) that in places such as Russia not paying the bribe would result in paying of more taxes. The company is less than happy with his revelations and has announced that it will file a complaint against him and Le Monde, however in the interview he stated that he felt that the whole reason the Nice Tramway scandal had been handled was to make him a scapegoat and thus one suspects that he has considerably more evidence sitting around somewhere to cause discomfort.
In other news the "workers" at SNCM - the state owned ferry service to Corsica - are extremely upset at plans to privatize it (translation), a plan which will result in the loss of 400 jobs and involves a firm called Butler Capital Partners, so thy are blocakding the parts of the port of Marseilles and fighting the police.
In my view a far better solution would be to shut the entire service down and sell the ships to someone who will employ sailors that aren't members of the Communist CGT trade union. The SNCM seems to have been on strike almost continuously over the last year and I am told that as a result bookings are way down. It seems people prefer to travel with Corsica Ferries instead because they stand a better chance of actually getting to/from the island on the date they intended. Mind you the CGT don't seem to have quite grasped the damage they have done to SNCM's reputation with statements that they are refusing to "laisser livrer ce joyau du service public maritime (...) aux armateurs privés" (refusing to let this jewel of maritime public service be delivered into private hands). If you think SNCM is a jewel then I have a bridge I can sell you.
Finally Le Monde today goes back to our poor friends HP (translation). It seems that the government would like to form a code of conduct with state aid where companies understand in advance what sort of poisoned chalice they are being offered what their duties and responsibilities are. It is noted that this clearly can't be made to retrospectively apply to HP, who will just be begged to stay by no less a person that Vile Pin himself:
Il a appelé le groupe à "redéfinir une stratégie d'avenir en France et en Europe" en soulignant que la France pouvait offrir un "développement approprié" à travers les pôles de compétitivité, qui visent à mettre en réseau entreprises, unités de recherche et centres de formation.
He invited the group "to redefine a strategy with a future in France and Europe" by stressing that France could offer a "suitable development" through the poles of competitiveness, which aim at putting in together a network of enterpises, units of research and training centers.
This all seems reasonable so you think that maybe the French government has become sane until you reach the last paragraph where you learn that the real reason why HP is so scandalous is that it dares to make a profit somewhere in the world. Apparently to the leaders of France if you make a profit you have no excuse to cut employment in France, irrespective of whether the French employees are a significant contributor to that profit or not.