From Middle East to France, a Jewish school's journey

(Full story)

By Lionel Laurent

PARIS | Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:38pm EDT

(Reuters) - Rabbi Jean-Paul Amoyelle, head of the Ozar Hatorah network of Jewish schools in France, was woken at 4 a.m. during a visit to New York with chilling news.

Jewish schools and synagogues in France had been targeted in a string of attacks in the past decade, many of them arson, but this was different.

A gunman had shot dead three children and a 30-year-old Hebrew teacher at his school in Toulouse, one of 20 in France with roots in the diaspora of Middle Eastern Jewry.

The shooting marks a tragic turn for Ozar Hatorah, which was created in the wake of the Holocaust in the mid-1940s by a Syrian-born Jew intent on improving the lot of Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2001 a classroom was burned down at a "Ozar Hatorah", or "Treasure of the Torah", school in the Paris suburb of Creteil, but the perpetrator turned out to be a pupil.

Amoyelle said Monday's attack was a sign of growing danger.

"This was deliberate. Anti-semitic and deliberate, I have no doubt," Amoyelle said by telephone as he was due to return to France. "I plan to install a zone of reinforced security."

Europe no handicap for golfer-turned-banker

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By Lionel Laurent

PARIS, March 15 | Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:23pm IST

(Reuters) - Economic growth is flatlining in Europe, household spending is in a funk and retailers are cutting prices - the perfect time to invest in consumer brands that can defy the downturn, professional golfer-turned-banker John Penning says.

The 39-year-old, who traded in his clubs for a life of finance after mingling with bankers on the putting green, has made his latest private-equity bet in the euro zone, taking over a chain of warehouse stores selling second-hand furniture and electrical goods mainly in France, the Benelux countries and Spain.

Penning's Saphir Capital bought Troc, which he describes as a "second-hand IKEA," for under 100 million euros ($130 million). The investment is small compared with the world's biggest furniture retailer, which made more than 200 times that amount in 2010 sales.

But the deal is part of a wider strategy for Penning, who also owns a stake in Frey - a French developer of retail parks in France and Spain - and is looking at other opportunities in the French consumer goods sector.

"I'm still excited about the euro...What is very good is strong brands," Penning told Reuters at an event to present Troc's strategy, which involves opening new stores and increasing the amount of brand-new goods sold while still retaining a primary foothold in second-hand products.