Vivendi

Vivendi SA (formerly known as Vivendi Universal) is a French media conglomerate with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet as well as video games.

The company disclosed a corporate loss of €23.3 billion in its 2002 annual report, the worst loss to date for a French company. Amid intense media scrutiny, its chairman and CEO, Jean-Marie Messier (who had overseen the most dramatic phase of the company's diversification), was subsequently replaced by Jean-René Fourtou.

Messier's rapid expansion of the firm, during which he overpaid hugely for media assets, saddling the company with debt far in excess of its market valuation and ultimately bringing it to the brink of collapse, has become a study in the triumph of personal ambition for greed and power over common sense.