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Vivendi's Messier seeks credibility in U.S.
When Jean-Marie Messier, the deal-hungry chief of media giant Vivendi Universal, snapped up Seagram and its vast array of entertainment assets last year, the cynics came out in force. How would Messier, a former French banker and civil servant with no experience in the cut-throat and idiosyncratic world of Hollywood, succeed where outsiders had always failed before? And how would the Franco-American conglomerate, with no distribution outlets in the United States to speak of, match the profit potential of rivals like AOL Time Warner Inc., Walt Disney Co. and Viacom Inc. In recent days, Messier has made an ambitious attempt… Read more »