EDF – which is 85% state-owned – has borrowed billions just to pay dividends to its state shareholder in recent years and its earnings are under pressure from record low wholesale electricity prices.
With its list of shareholdings that read like a Who's Who of French business, a revitalised domestic operation, a vast European network and a state shareholder that regularly topped up its equity, small wonder that some rivals were talking about it in the same breath as global giants like Deutsche Bank and Citicorp, and hailing Mr Haberer as a visionary.
The superconnectors have modern fleets and state shareholders.
Most of these are family-owned and are therefore able to act quickly and boldly without the hindrance of nervous capital markets or restrictive state shareholders.
The result was a shake-up at EADS in which Berlin paid more than $2 billion to buy a stake matching that of France, only to see the role of state shareholders greatly reduced by new governance arrangements at EADS.
The bank's state shareholders "have confirmed their will to support Dexia Group, so that it can implement the various measures in an orderly manner and under the best conditions," it added in the statement.
A number of smaller carriers are casting around for sugar-daddies to to come and rescue them, some because their own finances are in a dire state, others because their state shareholders are deeply in debt and need to flog them off.
However, despite Lenovo's subsequent stockmarket listing in Hong Kong and its skill in sidestepping ludicrous government rules against everything from differential pay and bonuses to control of the supply chain, the book attributes Lenovo's success a little too often to its state shareholders.
Volkswagen recorded the largest foreign sales in 2009 ($105 billion), and another German company, Deutsche Post, a logistics outfit, employs the most people abroad (258,000).In this section Overview Output, prices and jobs The Economist commodity-price index Multinationals with state shareholders Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates Markets Global financial assets Reprints.
"The idea is to prevent private-sector shareholders from replacing state shareholders as abusers of the system," Harner says.
In February, the SEC agreed with EOG's concerns, stating shareholders "would not be in a position to make an informed judgment" on the "matters of a complex nature" on which the resolutions sought to act.
