The future of tennis: Game, set and number-crunch?

(Full story)

By Lionel Laurent

LYON, France | Thu Apr 5, 2012 4:41am EDT

(Reuters) - Budding tennis stars who dream of being the next Novak Djokovic should think twice before shelling out for more coaching when they might better invest in the racket that tracks every move.

Created by venerable French tennis company Babolat, which started out in 1875 making strings from animal gut, the soon-to-be-unveiled prototype invention is designed to look and feel just like a regular, hollow-tube racket.

The twist is that the frame is lined with tiny sensors recording reams of data on every volley, lob, serve and drop shot. Uploading this information to a separate monitoring device will allow players to pore over the finer points of their performance without a coach or high-end video equipment.

It could be a big leap forward for a sport where rackets are often seen in a reverential, almost mystical light, and where critical distance and scientific analysis are left to the pros.

"There is an imaginary side to a player's racket, that it's like Excalibur, the sword that will win it all," says Eric Babolat, the company's grey-haired but youthful-looking 42-year-old chief executive, at his offices in Lyon, southeast France.

"We feel that people are looking for more rationality, more information on what is actually happening."

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

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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

(Full story)

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.

French bank property retreat opens door to funds

(Full story)


By Lionel Laurent
PARIS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - French banks are beating a retreat from the property sector, leaving a key under the doormat for private-equity investors, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds.

BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole are all hawking bundles of property loans to prospective buyers to shrink their balance sheets to meet tough new rules designed to clamp down on risk, according to two Paris-based real-estate bankers.

The potential impact is significant as banks account for two-thirds of European commercial property lending, with more than 384 billion euros' worth of loans maturing in 2012-2014. But prospective buyers and investors like private-equity funds and insurers will be on hand to pick up some of the slack, property market experts say.

"The banks' retreat does have a rather considerable impact on investment...(But) it does leave substantial room for manoeuvre for all the private-equity funds that tend to come from the United States," said Magali Marton, head of EMEA research for property consultancy DTZ.

Bankers go on election charm offensive

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By Lionel Laurent and Matthieu Protard

PARIS | Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:41am GMT

Feb 24 (Reuters) - Faced with the prospect of becoming the scapegoats of an increasingly bitter presidential showdown, French banks are stepping up their own campaign to convince the public and politicians of their worth.

Armed with upbeat statistics on loan growth in France and scare stories about what a crackdown on banks could do to the economy, they are pressing their case face-to-face with politicians and wooing the public with advertising campaigns.


One in-demand lunch companion is Francois Hollande, the Socialist presidential candidate taking on conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Seen as a pragmatist rather than a firebrand by some bankers, Hollande has nonetheless pledged to break up French banks and slap them with new taxes if elected.

"We recently invited Francois Hollande into our offices and told him our point of view," an executive at one of France's biggest banks told Reuters. "We explained how things were getting dramatic. He sat with us and listened."

Hollande's team declined to comment. 

"Hollande discount" hangs over French banks

(Full story)


By Lionel Laurent
PARIS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A declaration of war against the world of finance by French Socialist presidential front-runner Francois Hollande is threatening a rally over the past month in the shares of France's top banks.

Although a wave of cheap funding from the European Central Bank has pushed back the likelihood of a eurozone break-up and restored some confidence in French banks, the prospect of Hollande becoming the first Socialist president in 17 years is worrying some in the markets.

Hollande, a bespectacled career politician who has called finance his biggest foe, has sketched the broad outlines of measures including an extra tax on banks, separating their socially useful activities from those seen as speculative, and a ban on what he calls toxic loans.

The proposals are vague - and there are some doubts as to what extent they would be implemented if Hollande finds himself in the Elysee Palace in May - but they could cut fairly deeply into banks' profits at a time of already sluggish growth.

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, an investment bank, estimates their impact at around 10 percent of annual earnings for top banks including BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, or a combined 1.7 billion euros ($2.3 billion).

"The measures are a bit fuzzy in our view, and these kinds of worries mean that if the rally continues I doubt French banks will be investors' preferred choice," said Marco Bruzzo, head of Mirabaud Gestion, an asset management company, in Paris.

Wells Fargo among bidders for BNP $11B energy book -sources

(Full story) (FT first broke the news BNP was selling the book; we were first to name Wells Fargo, which eventually won, as a bidder)


By Lionel Laurent
PARIS, Jan 27 (Reuters) - BNP Paribas, France's largest listed bank, is aiming to sell up to $11 billion of loans to oil and gas companies and has received interest from Canadian buyers, according to two banking sources familiar with the situation.

The sale is the latest sign of retreat by European banks, which have faced months of funding turmoil as a result of the euro zone debt crisis and are pushing to offload dollar assets to shrink their balance sheets and build precious capital.

The cutbacks are putting pressure on dollar-focused industries such as energy, shipping and aerospace. Indonesian tanker firm Berlian Laju is teetering on the brink of default, while Swiss refiner Petroplus filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday.

BNP Paribas, which according to one banker opened its energy loan-book up to potential buyers just over a month ago, has whetted the appetite of several banks in North America, particularly Canada, according to sources.

"The $11 billion figure was cited ... There is certainly Canadian interest," one banker familiar with the deal said. "Our feeling is that it is inevitably going to be broken down into chunks."

Another source said that in addition to Canadian buyers, BNP had received interest from U.S. banks including Wells Fargo and had been getting offers with a discount of less than 5 percent of the value of the loan.

"The cost of funding is killing BNP's margins so they want to get out," the source said. The portfolio contains long-term loans to energy companies that do not have the cash flow to fund their own exploration or production activities, he added.