Reality check

28 November 2007 By Pierre Briancon

The new French president thought he had some bright ideas to restructure French industry. But the ThalesSafran merger is rightly dead in the water and he s thinking twice about his plans to combine Areva with Alstom. Market realities are sinking in after all.

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Denis Ranque, chairman and chief executive of Thales, the French defence electronics company, said in an interview with Les Echos on Wednesday that plans to merge with Safran, a defence and telecom conglomerate, had been shelved to allow Safran to concentrate on its own restructuring.

Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, the nuclear group, said in an interview on TV channel France 24 this week that plans to merge the company with turbine maker Alstom would mostly produce "negative synergies". She called for a privatisation of Areva instead.

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