Afew months ago, it was still fashionable to castigate Vivendi Universal, the French media giant, for its lingering interest in the sewage and water-treatment business. Vivendi, it was said, needed to shed such unglamorous activities and concentrate purely on consumer media. These days, however, Jean-Marie Messier, Vi-vendi's boss, lists the income from environmental services as one of the "strong defensive qualities" of the group. Even before the French government kindly knocked down the price of its 3G mobile-telephone licence last week, Vivendi's share price had held up while others' plunged. It is one of the few media groups not to have issued a profit warning.
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