Wendel's second-largest holding is in Legrand, an electrical group it bought into with KKR in 2002.
These included Charles Clore's acquisition of Selfridges and the bitter battle between GEC and AEI which saw Arnold Weinstock's electrical group triumph over its bigger rival.
But, thanks to surging sales of semiconductors and information-technology equipment, Japan's largest electrical group has clawed its way back into profit.
After his chastening experience in Dusseldorf, Mr Morita journeyed on to Eindhoven in the Netherlands where the great Dutch electrical group, Philips, had its headquarters.
In early June, the electrical group reported illegally high levels of a carcinogen, trichlorethylene an industrial cleaning agent that is believed to cause kidney and liver damage as well as cancer in the groundwater beneath four of its domestic factories.
Profits for the first half were up by 30% to £287m ($414m) compared with a year ago, when things were admittedly very bad for the retailer.Weak stockmarkets persuaded Kingfisher, a British retail group, to abandon a flotation of BUT, its French electrical group.
The move was finally quashed when Mr Liddle got Siemens, a German electrical group, to push the Xerox version of Ethernet through the European standards body, ECMA.But Mr Metcalfe was unable to convince another large company, IBM, to go with his invention.
The 38th Engineer Battalion's electrical group studied the batteries, the electrical firing systems and the radar fuzes which detonated the bomb at the required altitude.
The electricals group Comet, camera specialist Jessops and music retailer HMV collapsed into administration earlier this year.
Six years into a turnaround at the electricals group, James has completed a revamp of the Currys and PC World chains started by his predecessor John Browett.
