French business circles shiver as captains of industry tell their stories

If there is such a thing as national character, a compulsion to write books and squeamishness about money are certainly French traits. This autumn, the chief executive of one of France's biggest firms, a well-known consultant and an advertising executive succumbed to writer's itch. In their books, the first two praised France's "new capitalism" and pleaded for greater transparency in business. The third published a vitriolic novel that lost him his job.

With self-derision and pride, Mr Jean-Marie Messier, chief executive of the Vivendi conglomerate, borrowed the title for his autobiography from the satirical TV puppet show Les Guignols de l'info. His puppet is called J6M - for "Jean-Marie Messier MoiMeme Maitre du Monde" (JeanMarie Messier Myself Master of the World).

In six years, Mr Messier (43) has changed the name of the sleepy old Generale des Eaux and diversified into information technology, telecoms and entertainment, multiplying the value of Vivendi six-fold. His friendly $34 billion (€39.1 billion) merger with Seagram-Universal puts him at the head of the world's second largest communication group after AOL Time Warner.

The most shocking revelation of J6M.com was Mr Messier's salary. He earned £780,312 (€991,501) after taxes last year, not counting millions in stock options. It was Mr Messier publishing such information - not the amount - that chilled French business circles. No French chief executive had done so before.

"It won't solve French society's problems with money," Mr Messier told Elle magazine amid publicity for his book's publication. "Look at the contempt that goes with the expression `nouveau riche'. I think it's good when a young person creates their own enterprise and earns a lot."

Mr Messier dubiously claims his other publicity stunt - a photograph in Paris Match showing him lounging on his bed with a hole in the big toe of his sock - was unintended. In a recent appearance on a televised book programme, he said he was frightened by the "limousine syndrome" that affects French executives.

"The worst thing that can happen to you is to lose your common sense, to be cut off from reality, not to understand what is happening in the street."

For his openness and uninhibited defence of the new economy, the left-wing newspaper Liberation called Mr Messier "the model child and saviour of the reputation of an incestuous family, that of French capitalism".

Vivendi's chief executive has an ardent supporter in Mr Alain Minc, a highly paid business consultant and the author of www.capitalisme.fr. The communist daily L'Humanite snidely dubbed Mr Minc the "little prophet of the big bosses", but his turgid book reminded me of a US general's comment, made in another context: "It's not enough for the French that something works in practice; they want it to work in theory."

Mr Minc prefers the term "new capitalism" to "new economy". The technological revolution has coincided with the victory of market economics throughout the world, he writes, making "the ingredients of a new capitalisme patrimonial [capitalism of ownership] in which shareholders are the masters."

Executives who used to worry about employees, trade unions and the State "now feel the shareholders breathing over their shoulders. It's become their obsession", Mr Minc says. This "new, powerful and efficient capitalism" will end "the myth of the middle classes" for "when it goes at full speed, as at the moment, capitalism is a machine that produces inequality".

Disgust rather than the lack of social justice is at the heart of Fred eric Beigbeder's savage attack on the advertising industry in his best-selling novel 99 francs. "I'm writing to get myself fired," he announces on the first page. Sure enough, Young & Rubicam, the world's largest advertising agency where Mr Beigbeder had worked for 10 years, dismissed him last month.

An Italian agency immediately tried to hire him, with a company Porsche as a bonus. "They didn't understand that I've had it with this business," he told Le Journal du Dimanche. "I don't want people to believe that advertising is about the power of imagination; it's about the power of materialism."

The Wonderbra ad - "Look me in the eyes, I said in the eyes" - was one of Mr Beigbeder's successful campaigns. In his novel, advertising ensnares his alter ego Octave in cynicism, divorce and a craving for cocaine and fashion models.

But if he runs out of money, Mr Beigbeder can always ask his brother Charles for help. Perhaps it was Frederic who thought up the gold-plated Karl Marx sickle that Charles Beigbeder's online brokerage firm Self Trade used in its publicity campaign. The third largest French Internet broker, Self Trade does not expect to make profits before 2002. That did not stop the German firm DAB from buying it out for £720 million last month.