FRANCE LE BIG BANG
France's capital markets, for long among the most regulated in
the world, are at last being exposed to international competition.
Banks, brokers, and industrial corporations are leaving the protective
umbrella of state administration.
The Finance Ministry has proposed new markets in certificates of
deposit, treasury bonds, commercial paper, and futures; and it is
replacing the system of government-set lending limits with the notion of
free money markets. It's even nibbling away at the currency
controls that have frightened away international investors, and it has
set in train a reorganization of the bourse (stock exchange) opening up
to banks what has traditionally been the preserve of a comfortable
coterie of agents de change (brokers).
The most dramatic change will be the denationalization of the
state-owned corporations. They were supposed to be the showpieces of
President Francois Mitterrand's new socialist government, when it
was elected in 1981. ...
