October 22, 2007
An American in Paris comes to New York
I have just walked a few blocks over to see Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, at the annual conference in New York organised by Paris Europlace, the organisation that promotes the city and the country as an investment and finance centre.
I last bumped into Ms Lagarde in Davos in January when she was the trade minister but she has since been promoted to become the only woman finance minister in the G8 by Nicolas Sarkozy.
You would expect someone who is known as "the American in Paris" and was formerly chairman of the international law firm Baker & MacKenzie to appeal to US investors and she was indeed extremely polished and persuasive about the merits of, for example, Paris as a financial centre.
At a media briefing, Ms Lagarde batted aside a question suggesting that France is a protectionist country that does not welcome foreign takeovers. She reeled off statistics such as the 46 per cent ownership of the CAC 40 companies held by international investors and managed subtly to suggest that the US was even more protectionist without actually saying so.
I asked her about sovereign wealth funds, which were discussed in Washington last Friday, and found her answer conciliatory. She did not reject the idea of SWFs holding voting shares in French companies and suggested that the biggest concern was whether the funds should enjoy sovereign immunity from legal actions.
I thought it was an impressive performance.
