Dimensions
165 x 243 x 27mm
In 1994, Jean-Marie Messier, a French businessman, had a dream: to transform a 150-year-old French water company into one of the world's leading media empires. Over the next eight years he would spend more than $100 billion building Vivendi Universal, the only serious European challenger to the US giants of the media industry.
Messier would become the first French media mogul, a CEO superstar for the twenty-first century. At the height of his triumph, he was a poster boy for the New Economy, revered on Wall Street and in the City of London.
Messier finally fell in July 2002 in a boardroom coup sanctioned by the French establishment and the financial markets that had once worshipped him. Vivendi came within hours of bankruptcy and was forced into a fire sale of its media jewels to survive.
This portrait of one of today's most brilliant and flawed businessmen is a real-life morality tale of our times. It also provides a gripping insight into the changing face of international business in the global economy.
