Biz Watch

The Glory of France
Can France keep its businesses French? The government's attempt to create a national champion by engineering a 346 billion merger between drug firms Sanofi-Synthélabo and Aventis could end up backfiring. Hostile takeovers are rare and frowned upon in France, so Sanofi CEO Jean-François Dehecq's unsolicited offer for Franco-German Aventis last week raised eyebrows. Except in government:

Finance Minister Francis Mer openly endorses the takeover, while a source close to the deal says President Jacques Chirac, an old friend of Dehecq's, personally called Liliane Bettencourt, the biggest shareholder in L'Oréal — which in turn owns a big stake in Sanofi — to win her support for the bid. Neither party will comment. German union and government leaders fear that any deal will ax German jobs. But the big threat to French plans comes from Aventis itself. It insists the firm is worth far more than

INDICATORS Oil Under Fire U.S. lawyers filed suit against Royal Dutch/Shell after the Anglo-Dutch oil group slashed its proven reserves estimate by 20% last month. And a judge in Alaska ordered Exxon Mobil to pay $6.75 billion in damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Clipped Wings Paying the price for two years of rapid capacity growth, low-cost airline Ryanair announced profits for the current fiscal year would plummet by as much as 10% — the Irish carrier's first profit warning since going public in 1997. Franken Beer Ahead of E.U. rules requiring the labeling of GM foods from April, a Swedish brewer is testing consumers' stomachs for biotech produce with a lager brewed with GM corn from Germany.

Sanofi's offer — an invitation, bankers say, to a higher bid from Swiss Novartis, the U.S. 's Pfizer or another big international player. Not what the French had in mind.

Tips For Today's Executive
If there was a market in European business chiefs, it might be time to sell. Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann in late January flashed a victory sign and a broad smile as he walked into court to face breach-of-trust charges related to the 2000 takeover of German telecom firm Mannesmann by the U.K. 's Vodafone. He created a huge outcry about rich, arrogant executives. "Managers have lost contact with reality and live in an illusory world," railed Hans Leyendecker, a commentator for Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Similarly, Italians have been wringing their hands since the discovery of massive fraud at Parmalat, wondering when the other wing tip would drop in what seems to be a corporate system with blind spots. Sure enough, seven top officials at software firm Finmatica are now under investigation for alleged market rigging and obstruction; founder Pierluigi Crudele faced his first round of questioning last Friday. He took the hint: no victory sign.

It Ain't No Slow Worm
MyDoom became the fastest-spreading computer virus ever, generating 30% of e-mail traffic across more than 200 countries. The virus is estimated to have cost the global economy more than $25 billion.

The Bottom Line
	It's breathtaking. It's capitalism at full speed. The whole world's going to get richer
		BILL GATES, Microsoft chairman, on his expectation that China 's gross domestic product will surpass that of the U.S. in 20 years