L'Oreal Drama Becomes Farce On Paris Stage

By Lionel Laurent and Elizabeth Pineau

(Reuters) - France's richest woman Liliane Bettencourt has been recast as a cocaine-snorting, beer-guzzling amnesiac in a new play satirizing the L'Oreal heiress's very public rift last year with daughter Francoise.

Called "Because I'm Robbing Her Well," a spoof of L'Oreal's advertising slogan "Because I'm Worth It," the 80-minute farce retells the family feud sparked by Bettencourt's lavish gifts to a photographer friend, which snowballed into a major scandal when secret tapes led to a web of tax and party funding probes.

Set in a gaudy mansion filled with priceless works of art and a bathtub full of banknotes, the play treats the 88-year-old billionaire with some sympathy, presenting her as a playful but absent-minded spendthrift who craves adventure.

"Can't I just be let alone to do whatever I want with my one billion?" she asks aloud, in between downing a Stein glass of beer with her grandson and inhaling a line of cocaine with her charming, manipulative photographer friend "Marnier."

The play is stuffed with groan-inducing gags: Bettencourt's character is renamed "Caquencourt," a pun on the Paris CAC stock-market index, while her wealth manager son-in-law pulls out an abacus every time he is required to do simple sums.

With the play's subject matter already larger than life, however, some theatregoers admitted they were left unimpressed.

"I don't think we have enough distance yet. I think it was too early," said Nicolas Bouvard, a 30-year-old professional actor, after the curtain fell on a recent performance.

Sarkozy's Bark Worse Than Bite On Banks

By Lionel Laurent and Daniel Flynn

PARIS | Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:14pm IST

(Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has talked tough on banks this year but all signs are he has agreed to go easy where it matters -- on forcing increases in their capital.

Sarkozy was one of the hits of this year's World Forum meetings in Davos, telling JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon the global crisis had shattered trust in big players and had proved they needed regulation.

But while he has saddled his own banks with more tax on bonuses and balance sheets, he has been softer than neighbouring Switzerland or Britain when it comes to forcing lenders to raise their capital base and discouraging risk-taking, analysts say.

"The capital positions of large French banks are now weaker than those of European peers ... even though they entered the financial crisis with stronger capitalisation," Standard & Poors analyst Elisabeth Grandin said.

(Read on...)