The Chairman & CEO of reinsurance company SCOR, Denis Kessler, rightly pointed last week in Les Echos that the world was to rediscover the priority of equity funding ad that the time of easy debt financing was over. More than ever the cost of capital is now the condition of survival and growth for listed companies, their investments and therefore of general employment. But the first weeks of January 2010 confirmed what this issue was not an item on the agenda of the new chairman & CEO of EDF Henri Proglio : also acting chairman of Veolia Environnement, who requested the typical uncontrolled pay of French non excecutive chairmen (cf. see our September 2009 scoop about the Proglio’ imbroglio).
The idea of an addition of two top competing commitments based on no serious joint industrial project was possibly due to election ambitions of Nicolas Sarkozy to please Henri Proglio carrying France’s number one top city watering can. Nothing to do with our clients interests for the economic future of these groups and the energy independence of the country (see our recent debate on “Nuclear processes, dismantling and waste”).
Investors in EDF and Veolia Environnement will be well inspired to stick to a good senses requirement for good company governance and to further refuse any joint chairmanships.
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