The first was successful the second failedThirtyfour years later everything changed110 m2 in 2009 euros prognostic Chris NothamAlain Vaconsin is therefore all the mysteriesWhat justifies a price double that of the onionSome operators ask today to personalize devicesThe big three have already refined their proposalsThe Board of pensions had valued it at EUR 2The Democrats they have not finished to tieHe joined the London Office of the US firm in 1986In vogue in the 1990s, to save the distressed assets of public companies in distress, the hiving-off structures were, since then, more discrete. With the exception it is true of the Consortium de realisation (CDR), placed regularly under the spotlight, through the Executive Life or Adidas case. Yet, eight years after having published a first report on "The State intervention in the financial sector crisis", the Court of Auditors again a "near final" review on these structures. A review in the form of indictment.
Peeling accounts structures of cantonment of Crédit Lyonnais, the GAN and the counter of Entrepreneurs over the period 2000-2006, the court investigators accounts are indeed a severe look on this page in French economic history. The invoice is indeed salt: according to the accounts of the Court (1), it amounted to EUR 20.7 billion, EUR 1 billion less, when even, they agree that their estimate in 2000. But still too salty, believe the wise men of rue Cambon, that "the choice of restricted assets in a specific structure proved unwise."
Two priority objectives
First of all, according to them, the Organization of the structures of hiving-off was too complex (including the initial articulation between the structures of cantonment and those who financed) and their simplification not fast enough. Moreover, patterns of funding have malfunctioned. Examples: the maintenance of the mechanism of loan EPFR, an imperative of tax optimization for the CDR, "today singularly artificial", either the cash flow of EUR 300 million of the structure of the GAN "which no longer justified such high."
The Court also criticizes "lack of clear definition of the objectives assigned to the hiving-off process" or the "absence of strategy on the part of the State". Difficult indeed for these structures to reconcile two priority objectives: their own disappearance at the end of their mission, and the best possible enhancement of their assets, including responds Bercy in the annex to the report, pointing to the need to "make hard choices in an uncertain and volatile environment by construction".
Accountability of actors
Finally, the report questioned the management of these structures, including the "poorly controlled" overhead costs which are high between 2000 and 2006 to 539 million euros for single CDR including 60 of legal fees associated particularly with the Executive Life case. They evoke even "problems of regularity and transparency of accounts". What attracts them including this response from Bercy: reduction of the cost of the hiving-off must be taken, "at least in part, to the credit of the managers of these structures, which have been confronted in recent years to a more difficult task that the complexity of managed folders is naturally increased as the advancement of the hiving-off".
Could it be otherwise The Court of Auditors preferred the way of the accountability of actors even if facing a deposit balance and in any case recommends to exclude the implementation of comparable devices in the future: "the intervention of the State, if it appears necessary, should be limited to encourage, by taking possibly its part, the financial mobilization of all concerned partners." Bercy replies it that "it cannot be demonstrated with certainty that a choice other than the establishment of the structures of hiving-off would have been relevant from the point of view of public finance". An Exchange that resonates oddly in these new times of financial crisis...
