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If you are like me, then you are looking for a cheap health insurance plan, or at least to reduce what you are already paying.

 

From our correspondent in London

Rupert Murdoch and his son James are roundly scolded by a British parliamentary committee responsible for a report on the scandal of the late plays of the tabloid News of the World. Rupert Murdoch "is not fit to lead a large international group," concludes the report released Tuesday. The board deems "surprising" the allegations of Murdoch, father and son under which they would not have been aware of the practices of spying on a large scale in force in their newspapers. "Rupert Murdoch closed his eyes and demonstrated a willful blindness to what was happening in their societies and publications," the whips 121-page report, the culmination of nine months of hearings. MEPs also say that the News of the World and its publisher News International deliberately "misled the committee about the true nature and extent of the investigations they claimed to have carried on wiretapping."

Several leaders of the media group is also the subject of harsh criticism. His ex-CEO Les Hinton is considered an "accomplice" of concealment of practices in the home. The parliamentary committee has, however, divided on the report's findings, adopted by six votes against four. Conservative members refused to accept the judgment against Rupert Murdoch's ability to manage. Labour MP Tom Watson, spearheading the investigation, has firmly told the opposite: "News International has conducted a cover-up scale of its illegal actions instant credit reports. Its top leaders have lied to Parliament repeatedly. And the two men at the head, Rupert and James Murdoch, should now respond to these facts. They have corrupted our country to shame our police and our Parliament. They lied, cheated, practiced blackmail and intimidation. "

David Cameron called

The report leaves the House of Commons to decide on possible sanctions, which could involve the convening of Rupert Murdoch for a public apology. It is an embarrassment media mogul facing some of its shareholders, especially Americans, tired of the damage inflicted by News Corp. in this case. The report could also weigh negatively in the review by Ofcom, the regulator of the British media, the legitimacy of the group to manage the BSkyB satellite TV bouquet, whose license could be withdrawn.

Finally, the parliamentary report increases the pressure on David Cameron, who was summoned Monday to the House of Commons where he justified his support for his culture minister Jeremy Hunt challenged for its proximity to the leaders of the Murdoch group in reviewing the file BSkyB. Tom Watson claimed that the Prime Minister and his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown send the justice their email exchanges with the leaders of the Murdoch group.

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Complex and dense, the French tax system also has a little side fantasy. Example with the misnamed "tax on shows," which strikes no more cultural show but applies to sporting events, to circles and gambling houses This tax is 8% on entrance fees, except for motor racing and … pigeon shooting, imposed, for some reason, to 14%. Other sports are exempted. A very serious order lists them: athletics, judo but also bowls, sports bowling, target shooting, javelin, long palm … Our zealous technocrats have wanted to forget anyone. Finally, the municipalities, who are the beneficiaries of the entertainment tax, may decide to specific exemptions.

Believing that such exemptions are breaking the principle of equal taxation, the football club Paris Saint-Germain took the case before the Constitutional Council. In vain. The Sages have found these exemptions constitutional because they are based on objective and rational. "The Order lists mainly sports whose quality is not the first to draw crowds," said Council. And to clarify: "The revenue generated by a competition of cane, roller skating, trampolining, or twirling stick (which are exempt) are not commensurate with those that could generate a competitive tennis, football or rugby. "We can not agree more.

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Against finance, but not against the big bosses. The Socialist candidate for president, Francois Hollande, has reassured business leaders of the CAC 40, in an interview in Paris Matchpubliée Thursday. He was lampooned in mid-February, their salary increases "of 36% on average in 2010."

As we approach the elections, it has softened its tone. "We will need all the forces for the country's recovery. Therefore, in the aftermath of the presidential election, I will convene the CAC 40 companies, although many of their leaders will not vote for me, he says. I tell them: "You are the spearhead of the French economy. We need you and you need the state. We face together the challenge of recovery of France "."

The Socialist candidate was told by the president of MEDEF, Laurence Parisot, France 2 on Thursday, that the vocation of the employers' association was "to work with any government whatever." Tenors Socialist Party had in fact accused of campaigning for the incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy payday loans.

Francois Hollande tried several times to reassure the campaign finance and management. Visiting London, and then he gave himself to enemy "the world of finance," he said at the City he was not "aggressive" and that n ' there was "nothing to fear" if elected.

Still, the Socialist candidate wants to increase the effective tax rate of 35% in large groups and, among other things, against the practice of stock options. "France seems to bring out the multinationals," said Denis Kessler, CEO of Scor, quoted by The Economist. For the second consecutive week, the weekly British Liberal lampooned the socialist project to tax at 75% marginal bracket the higher incomes of over one million euros.

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With 2.2 million customers earned in just two months, has already exceeded Free Mobile Virgin Mobile and its 1.9 million customers won in six years. But Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, CEO of Virgin Mobile, do not admit defeat. After declining prices for its mobile plans starting January 11, he resigned from all his mandates (UNEDIC Medef …) to devote himself entirely to Virgin Mobile. He decided to strike back against the field of Free by launching its "Virgin box" ADSL and the first quadruple play (Internet, television, landline and mobile) market in less than 30 euros, including a mobile subscription (2 hour voice and sms). In Mobile, Virgin Mobile is launching a mini-package to 4.99 euros per month (for 45 minutes of calls and 450 SMS) and packages from EUR 12.99.

LE FIGARO-Virgin Mobile Will he survive the arrival of Free Mobile?

Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux-course! We intend to play the return match and the win. Niel has no monopoly on consumer protection. Virgin Mobile launches quadruple play offer (TV, Internet, landline and mobile), which is the cheapest on the market. We are less than 30 euros, while the average bill is more than 40 euros. If prices fell in mobile, fixed Internet on the bill for households is increasing. When we give moral lessons to everyone, we must be consistent in all markets! The credo of French Internet the cheapest in Europe, created by Xavier Niel, and conveyed by ARCEP, has become false. The fixed market in France is now oligopolistic. This allows Free to have margins of 39% and fund its mobile offering.

Are you facing a haemorrhage of customers?

Free Mobile to launch, it's true, we experienced a spike in departures. But that was quickly calmed. By the third week, that number fell, and fell further after the failure of Free March 20. Free Mobile is like Ryanair: you pay less, but you take off from Beauvais. Everybody does not want it. If we have lost customers, we also won. In the end, we lost 24,000 net customers, slightly more than 1% of our customer base. Neither more nor less than other operators.

Have you pumped up the numbers in March through promotions on private-sale?

No. We have fewer and fewer cancellations and more of recruitments, with our range Extaz, which has enrolled more than 100,000 customers in less than three months.

Virtual mobile operators (MVNO) are not they eventually threatened?

Virgin Mobile is no longer an MVNO like any other, it is a "full" MVNO. This means that we are not content to buy more minutes of telecoms but we have invested tens of millions of euros to build a network of heart. So we have the benefits of a network operator without its drawbacks: we touch the money when customers of other operators call our customers. We control our prices and have a real free trade. But unlike Free we are not forced to deploy expensive antennas.

Did you anticipate such an impact?

The day after the launch of Free we have aligned our prices. A quick response indicating that we were ready. I even took my team to Lorient in naval commandos prepare the response plan. A tariff to 19.99 euros was part of the scenarios, although this was not the one we preferred.

What will the impact on your margins?

Our sales increased 21% to 567 million, and EBITDA to exceed 30 million euros for the year ended March. From January to March 2012, activity was still up 13% despite the arrival of Free Mobile. The year 2012-2013 will be more complicated. We will focus on growth and invest in the quadruple play. The downside of this strategy is that our margins will be penalized. But we will remain profitable.

Why not be sold Virgin Mobile before the arrival of Free?

Virgin Mobile is not for sale. This is a scarce asset, growing. If we had had to sell, we would have done in 2011 as Vodafone, which has shrewdly sold his shares in SFR.

Tackle the offer that Free is committed to MVNOs?

We are not litigious. But the wholesale offer Free is inoperative. Given the difficulties of Free network, its limited coverage, pricing, no one's interest to be at Free MVNO. ARCEP has to ensure that the commitments that were made.

Do you, as President of ARCEP, the arrival of Free will eliminate 10,000 jobs?

I am afraid it is much more, if only in that sub-contractors. Nobody seems to get upset because these jobs are not embodied in a factory, but scattered around among operators, distributors, OEMs.

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Free

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In the stakes of companies with cash reserves of the most important, the major U.S. technology companies held the upper hand. 98 billion to Apple in addition to 52 billion from Microsoft, Google's 44 billion or 40 billion of Cisco. These five cumulative 234 billion of cash! And they all have the same problem: what to do with this money?

So much so that they are regularly subjected to a barrage of criticism from all sides: investors, financial analysts, policy and consumer. Very critical of the companies too much debt, analysts do not like to see huge reserves of unused money. They would prefer to see used to finance growth internally or externally.

This is far from true. Microsoft has spent less than 0.14% of its cash reserves in 2011 to finance acquisitions. The problem is that these technology companies are too big to grow: 90% of PCs sold worldwide are already equipped with Microsoft. Their business model does not lend itself to growth operations to increase geographical presence: Microsoft, Apple and Google are already everywhere. They could invest in diversification, but changes in industry are very difficult to manage. Google has spent $ 15 billion last year to buy Motorola and must demonstrate their ability to integrate.

Paradoxically, the distribution of dividends is also an image problem. An unwritten principle of equity markets is that a growth company does not distribute dividends cash advance. The rise of the action sufficient to satisfy the shareholder. The dividend distribution is restricted to mature companies who see their growth slowing. A dividend is a bad sign given to the market.

Consumer discontent

In fact, Microsoft has begun to pay dividends in 2003. Since then, growth has stalled. Cisco has committed to do that in 2010 and Apple, since Monday. They do that and constraints enforced. "On average, the stocks of companies in the S & P 500 offer a yield of 2 to 3%, is an analyst at Merrill Lynch. For Apple, it will be 1.8%. "Having a pile of gold is also a source of tension with the political. Between half and three quarters of reservations technology groups are located outside the United States and they will not repatriate cash because U.S. tax severely penalizes this movement. These groups of high-tech campaigning for abolition of this tax. But they are regularly criticized by American associations who wish to see them spend their money to create jobs in the U.S. and pay taxes in their home country.

Finally, consumers would be able to claim a share of the booty. If Apple has as much cash, it's because its products are very expensive and that its margins are buxom (44.7%). Consumers may therefore require lower prices.

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While the direction of Ikea France has since February been investigated by the prosecutor of Versailles for alleged espionage of its employees and customers, new documents overwhelm even more the French subsidiary of the giant Swedish furniture.

According to Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France, several e-mails show the harassment of a syndicalist CGT store Thiais (Paris region) since 2010. According to the newspaper, Benamar Mokkedem, used to restore the store been a real investigation to support management-led, since he has posted on the Facebook page of the CGT Thiais a photomontage concerning the relationship of the founder of Ikea with small groups of extreme right. The image that was traveling on the Internet was not the taste of management. Between October and December 2010, leaders of various Ikea and have exchanged e-mails with their lawyer to get the name of the author's message on Facebook and sue. At the request of its clients, the lawyer has even contacted Facebook and Google for personal information. Today indicted for public insults against Ikea, Benamar Mokkedem was also heard by the management group, and was threatened with dismissal for errors badging and unexcused absences.

Matrimonial regime to revenue

This appetite for confidential information is also denounced by Mediapart who managed to contact customers of the group on which investigations had been opened. The site is covered as well as the security director laid off today, Jean-Francois Paris, asked a detective to find personal information on a couple of customers with which the store had a dispute, but also a business that the group had contacted him to sell ad space in a publication! Information obtained ranged from the act of home ownership, the matrimonial regime, through the turnover of the company that the buyer of a cabinet was the manager.

New revelations that are sure to stimulate discussion on Tuesday afternoon. The management of Ikea France has indeed to meet 14 hours of the company unions.

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• Growth downgraded

The European Central Bank (ECB) is now more pessimistic than before about growth in the euro area in 2012. She believes that the activity should decrease slightly, by -0.1%. This figure is actually an average of its forecast range of growth rate, which ranges from -0.5% to +0.3%. "We are seeing signs of stabilization in activity at very low levels," said the ECB president Mario Draghi at a press conference Thursday. Growth should be particularly driven by exports outside the euro area and interest rates low.

While growth has been revised downwards, inflation, it has been revised upward. The ECB expects inflation of 2.4% (above its medium-term target of 2%), against 2% previously, mainly because of energy prices.  

• Assistance to banks: a success

The ECB has conducted since last December, two very large-scale operations to unfreeze credit markets, representing more than 1,000 billion euros in loans to banks in three years. "The first impact of these measures has been positive," welcomed Mario Draghi. Both loans have a giant early return of confidence in the markets, he said in substance, and investors come back in the eurozone: "We find that money market funds, which were the first to flee the euro area there is one and a half. We see, again, the pension funds. We see investment funds. "

He stressed further that many small banks have subscribed to the second loan giant BCE, among them 160 small German institutions no fax payday loans. The latter "are closer to SMEs and banks that have subscribed to the first operation," which could be the harbinger of a credit easing in the real economy, he argued.

Faced with criticism, Mario Draghi said that the massive injections of liquidity into the financial system did not cause a rise in commodity prices. Their surge "began well before the operations of the ECB," he argued.

• States criticized less

"Regarding fiscal consolidation, many governments in the euro area are making progress, welcomed the President of the European Central Bank. The pursuit of fiscal consolidation and full compliance with all commitments remains essential. "Less severe than usual about the fiscal policies pursued by the States, Mario Draghi said that the ECB had done its job with its massive loans banks and the capital needed to take over "the ball is in the hands of governments and other actors, particularly banks, to continue reforms, clean up their balance sheets so they can continue to support – especially banks – the recovery. "

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Monitoring greenhouse tomatoes by computer processing of GPS fields, sales of wheat on the futures market … French farmers have nothing to do with their ancestors. Now they are showing their attachment to the land of a sudden high-tech.Plus question, for example, to sow the fly in vegetable and grain farms. The embedded software on tractors is more effective. Sebastien Objois, wheat producer in Evry, came to be convinced to stand agricultural equipment of the Exhibition of Agriculture. He witnessed a demonstration of interest Farmstar, which uses data from satellites SPOT 4 and SPOT 5. With this system, a digital pad and connected to the preprogrammed drill or spray can, depending on the characteristics of the field, sow more or less dense or spread more or less treatment.

"With board computerized equipment in the tractor plugged Spot 4 and Spot 5, you can sow your field with an accuracy of 2 centimeters," says Michel Fuga, who came to promote the Farmstar Porte de Versailles. Advantage for growers: Pesticide use is reduced by 5-15%. This saving can be amortized over three years the cost of equipment (about 15,000 euros).

More free time

Technological advances also benefit dairy farmers. With milking robots, the constraints of the morning and evening disappear. The cows go by themselves to trafficking. "The monitoring of the herd is behind the screen using a special software," says Eric Swartvagher, administrator ANEFA, National Association for the employment and training in agriculture.

Computers are also present in vegetable greenhouses. "Eating tomatoes above ground is now available from a computer, which controls the amount of water and air," says Angelique Delahaye, president of France and producer of vegetables in Touraine.

It is not enough to produce, we also sell the goods. The use of futures market or delayed deliveries, and a deadline for a given price, is becoming more common online payday loans. "I practiced for several months to sell my pigs and to buy my food. But it took me to form, "says Philippe Upstream, pig farmer in Brittany.

"These new techniques not only meet the objective of increasing yields, and therefore income, but also a willingness of farmers to benefit from free time and family life close to those of society," said Christophe Malvezin, Agricultural Counselor, Embassy of France in Washington and former agricultural adviser of Nicolas Sarkozy.

Despite these advances, the French agriculture still has a wide margin for improvement. "While the United States, 80% of crops are produced by biotechnology, in France it is delayed, concludes Guy Vasseur, president of the Permanent Assembly of Chambers of Agriculture (APCA). France can not be a spectator in this area of ​​what is happening in the world. "

680,000 visitors to the agricultural show this year

Vintage 2012 International Exhibition of Agriculture (SIA) is very good. "We record 680,000 visitors, slightly more than last year," says Jean-Luc Poulain, president of SIA. This figure could be revised upwards as a computer bug has disrupted the counting inputs. "Merchants have never worked so hard that Wednesday, we recorded one of the lowest attendance days, with 55,000 entries," says Jean-Luc Poulain. The Friday night has been successful in statistics, with nearly 107,000 visitors for the biggest day of the show. Again this year, the SIA will remain the largest agricultural fair in the world with this feature: together in one place all the farm animals.

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The distributor of cultural products has just begun, according to reports, several real estate firms to find a buyer for its flagship location in the Champs Elysees, which extends from number 52 to 60. The lease of this great store, with a total area of ​​7000 m2, 4500 m2 dedicated to the sale, has become too important to the brand, which saw its sales decline year after year.

This is simply one of the best commercial brands of Paris. Apple would be in the running, but other signs, without declaring themselves, dream of settling there. This is the case of the Forever 21 American and British Marks & Spencer, which has invested in late last year a smaller area in the middle of the avenue.

A turnover down

President of Virgin, Jean-Louis Raynard, recently revealed in our columns "working on a new store model, smaller, more segmented with an offer," while showing its commitment to the Champs-Elysees, which has just be renovated. The brand is committed, however, since last year in an overhaul of its fleet of 28 stores, including three in the capital us fast cash. Those of Saint-Denis and Metz will close this spring, after those of Bordeaux-Merignac in 2011 and the Louvre, late January. Moreover, according to reports, after replacing last year's Virgin in stations and airports, Fnac has taken the location of Virgin in the center Beaugrenelle, and will open next year. Virgin, however, confirms its opening on March 21 in Saint-Lazare station.

In 2011, the turnover of the distributor has "slightly" decreased to about 300 million euros. Above all, he still has not reached equilibrium, described by Butler Capital's shareholder since 2008. Contacted, the fund does "no comment", adding that the decision to leave the Champs-Elysees "is not in the agenda."

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