Children are not always worthy heirs of their fathers, but who knows what former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who has always been a staunch European federalist and liberal, thought in the face of the laughable utterances of his son Henry to defend his seat at the head of the Club Med, of which he has been father-owner for ten years, from the assault by the Italian "barbarians" of Andrea Bonomi.
A private company is free to choose the partners it wants and, when it is in evident crisis and has financial statements showing heavy losses like Club Med, to sell to whoever it believes, but it cannot do two things if it does not want to arouse general hilarity and put jeopardizing the interests of its shareholders: ignoring the size of the offers from the suitors and appealing to economic patriotism even when the interests of the managers are at stake, but certainly not those of the country.
The facts are known: for the conquest of Club Med there is a duel between two consortiums, involving takeover bids and counter-bids. One is Franco-Chinese, made up of the private equity funds Ardian and Fosun which would make Giscard the head of the balance sheet, and the other is the one put forward by Andrea Bonomi's Global Resort and his Investindustrial. The difference between the offer of the two consortiums is as follows: 21 euros for each Club Med share proposed by Global Resort and 17,5 euros advanced by Ardian and Fosun. Unable to deny the evident disparity of the offers, what did the fifty-year-old Giscard invent to take the side of the Franco-Chinese consortium? That the Italian proposal "does not guarantee a French anchor" because, while the first proposal would give the majority to the French thanks to the 4% in the hands of the managers, the Italian one aims to take over 100% of Club Med.
On the altar of economic patriotism, France has made many rounds of waltzes such as when it inserted Camembert among the strategic products to defend Danone from the attack of foreigners, but to argue that even tourist villages are strategic will not be easy especially for a company that has many foreign customers. But Henry Giscard's game is all too open: what he wants to defend is not the Frenchness of Club Med but the centrality of his interests and his colleagues who collect 4% of the shareholding by asking Hollande (historical irony!) to open the portfolio of public coffers.
We will see what happens in the next few weeks when the Club Med board of directors makes its decision but, barring relaunch by the French-Chinese consortium with possible state support, it will be interesting to understand how the imaginative Henry Giscard will explain to his shareholders that it is better to choose between two offers the worst as long as you protect Frenchness and above all your armchair.
