Starbucks Fighting Commodity Costs

By Lionel Laurent

PARIS, March 8 (Reuters) - Coffee chain Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) is feeling the pressure from rising commodity costs and is working to offset them by keeping a flexible pricing policy, its U.S. head told Reuters late on Tuesday.

Although Starbucks has already secured coffee supplies through end-September, other ingredients like cocoa and sugar are causing concern as supply fears fan prices, Cliff Burrows said in an interview in Paris.

"Everything from dairy to what's been happening in recent weeks to the price of oil is all adding to the pressure," he said. "We are working very hard to mitigate those commodity pressures ... Whether that's moving some prices down, keeping some the same and moving some up."

Coffee and cocoa futures are trading at historic highs on the back of supply concerns and political unrest in Africa, where major cocoa exporter Ivory Coast has been paralysed by international sanctions and the aftermath of a disputed November election that has brought it to the brink of civil war.

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Carrefour Exec's Qualifications Under Scrutiny

This story was picked up by the International Herald Tribune, the U.K. Daily Telegraph, France's La Tribune, Le Point and Le Monde -- the only newspaper to actually manage to get Carrefour to react, too.

By Lionel Laurent

PARIS, March 25 (Reuters) - Carrefour (CARR.PA), the world's No. 2 retailer, is facing embarrassing questions over the appointment of a senior executive whose previous employer disputes that he held the top role claimed in his profile.

When Paris-based Carrefour hired Jose Carlos Gonzalez-Hurtado away from Procter & Gamble (PG.N) to take the newly created post of chief commercial officer in Nov. 2009, the food retailer heralded his recent promotion to worldwide head of P&G's male grooming unit Braun.

"In 2006, he was appointed Vice President of Global Braun Male Products, and in 2008, he was put in charge of Braun globally," the press release said in November 2009, language that is echoed in the profile of the Spaniard -- now a member of Carrefour's board - on the retailer's website.

But according both to Braun itself and to the P&G unit's former head, Gonzalez-Hurtado's promotion from vice president to president of the unit is a fiction.

"That is not accurate," Braun spokesman Lars Atorf said, stating that Hurtado had never been president at the P&G unit, best known for its electric razors. "When you are in the role of vice-president you are number two, you are leading the brand-building."

Procter & Gamble's annual reports for 2008 and 2009 cite Juan Pedro Hernandez as the president of Braun. Reached by Reuters, Hernandez said: "I was the only president of Braun."

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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.

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Hedge Fund Predators On The Prowl For Stragglers

By Lionel Laurent and Laurence Fletcher

PARIS/LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Hedge funds are prowling the post-crisis landscape looking to buy small, weakened rivals that are struggling to grow.

The most vulnerable targets are so-called funds of hedge funds, essentially a basket of stakes in individual funds, which have been among the hardest-hit by client outflows.

"Consolidation will potentially be the only way to survive for smaller funds," said Aureliano Gentilini, global head of hedge fund research at Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. "It will be a trend that cannot be averted."

Funds of hedge funds are also seen as easier targets because they are typically run by a team rather than a single, star manager who could be difficult to replace.

"Funds of hedge funds are more sellable than single-manager funds," said Antoine Haddad, founder of Bainbridge Partners, a $950 million firm that is keen to make acquisitions.

"They are usually managed by a team and are not star-driven; you're selling a business process."

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Banks Cash In On French Housing Boom

By LIONEL LAURENT | REUTERS

PARIS: The traditional French aversion to risk and debt is being turned on its head as rock-bottom interest rates and tax breaks push investors into real estate, boosting banks’ mortgage lending and their client revenue.

The worry is not that a subprime-style fiasco is in the making, but rather that these trends are unlikely to last.

French housing loan issuance doubled in the 12 months to Nov. 2010, according to the Banque de France, to 145 billion euros ($198.3 billion) — eclipsing mortgage stagnation in crisis-scarred Spain and a 7.9 percent decline in Germany.

House prices in France also outpaced Spain and Germany with an 8.6 percent rise in the third quarter of 2010, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, driven by a cocktail of ultra-low interest rates and government incentives to spur home buying.

Such growth is not a ticking time bomb for domestic lenders like BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole, analysts say. French household balance sheets are solid, lending standards are tight and according to Deutsche Bank France has one of the lowest mortgage-to-GDP rates in Europe at 35 percent.

“Housing loans in France are of a significantly higher quality overall than in a lot of other countries,” said Christophe Nijdam, analyst with Alphavalue. He said France lacked the kind of helter-skelter securitisation that had encouraged U.S. lenders to take big risks in the past.

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BNP's Merger Maestro Seen As CEO-In-Waiting

By Lionel Laurent

PARIS, Jan 25 (Reuters) - After a decade in the shadows knocking acquisitions into shape, BNP Paribas Chief Operating Officer Jean-Laurent Bonnafe may soon find himself in the spotlight as next in line to head France's biggest listed bank.

Speculation is mounting that BNP -- one of the few banks to have kept its reputation and its top management intact throughout the crisis -- is turning its hand to succession planning, with the 49-year-old COO as the shoe-in candidate.

"The job is his, unless some major screw-up happens on his watch," a former colleague at BNP said.

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