There was more than a thing to do was to sell assets

The Vivendi-Messier trial enters the heart of the matter. In the aftermath of the assignment of the Adam by Vivendi to relinquish French shareholders to join to the "class action" in New York, the American Judge Richard Hollwell continued its hearings on forced March. After the hearings filmed of Agnès Touraine, ex-PDG of Vivendi Universal Publishing, and Jacques Espinasse, former Financial Director of the group who had succeeded Guillaume Hannezo in July 2002, it was the turn of the President of the Supervisory Board of Vivendi, Jean-René Fourtou, testify, Tuesday and Wednesday, in the eleven members of the American people's jury of the District Court in Manhattan. A testimony crucial to counsel for the complainants, Arthur Abbey, whose objective remains to show that the "liquidity crisis" was connue of the Interior before the resignation of the ex-PDG of Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier, July 1, 2002.

"The Moody's blackmail."

"There was a short-term liquidity crisis." "My arrival on 3 July 2002, I found a company on the cessation of payments (...)", confirms as he had written in an internal memo to employees dated August 19, by the American lawyer Michael Calhoon. "We had to quickly negotiate a cash flow of EUR 1 billion facility with seven banks," recounts Jean-René Fourtou in her filmed testimony presented to the jury on the big screen. It also explains that he had "prepared at the end of the cessation of payments", but that it is not at all "the equivalent of a bankruptcy in French law.However, it remains rather vague about the real causes of this liquidity crisis, without wanting to pronounce on the analysis that had sent the former Financial Director Guillaume Hennezo, according to which "the liquidity problem was related to the structure of the debt."

For the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vivendi, that rappelle accepted the présidence of the Group almost to his body défendant (but on the insistent advice of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former President of the Republic!), it is especially the "Moody's blackmail" which aggravé the situation at the time. "When I was asked to take the reins of Vivendi, person not has reported me that there were any problems of cash flow", adds Jean-René Fourtou, co-opted by the Council on 1 July 2002.

Is that after the first Board of Directors of Vivendi from July 2 that Vivendi Chairman says realized the seriousness of the situation, when he received a "deadly phone hit" Moody's the compelling of "find 1 billion euros of financing in three days ....". "I found impossible Moody's people and their unacceptable behaviour," adds Jean-René Fourtou, stating that he was unaware of a Goldman Sachs presentation on the situation of the group in June. "Moody's was satisfied that we were unable to honour our commitments of liquidity", strongly Jean-René Fourtou denouncing the "Moody's blackmail."For this emergency funding, "threatened banks by telling them that AXA and Aventis remember their attitude Editor's Note: for refusal reminding them that elles had been praised Jean-Marie Messier for convergence." "I told them that it would be worse than Enron in the United States", he added before the members of the jury, dumbfounded. "There was more than a thing to do, was to sell assets." I have asked for a round table: there were virtually not a single administrator to tell me the same thing: one was the telephone, for the other, the management of water, or television that it had purchased two months before without knowing that they were unmarketable. "Thoughtfully, judge Holwell verges on its small white moustache between the thumb and the index. It is still the lawyers for the complainants to prove that the "liquidity crisis" was well known internally and has not been passed on the outside.