In Vivendi F-Cubed Trial, Former CEO Messier Calls Fraud Allegations 'Infamous Lies'

By D.M. Levine

November 20, 2009

You have to feel for jurors in the Vivendi f-cubed class action trial, who've already sat through six weeks of testimony on the arcana of U.S. and French securities laws. But things got a lot more interesting Friday, when former Vivendi chief executive Jean-Marie Messier took the stand. We hadn't looked in on the trial since opening arguments, so we dashed over to Manhattan federal district court to hear the first part of the charismatic onetime mogul's testimony.

We weren't disappointed. "What I heard in this courtroom this morning was just outrageous," Messier said, in English layered with a thick French accent. The allegations against him, he said, were "blatant lies, infamous lies."

Messier was the first defense witness to take the stand in this test of whether foreign investors who bought shares of foreign companies on foreign exchanges can recover damages in U.S. courts. The plaintiffs, represented by former Litigator of the Week Arthur Abbey of Abbey Spanier Rodd & Abrams, have accused Messier and his former chief financial officer, Guillaume Hannezo, of lying to investors and the public about Vivendi's financial health. Among the "infamous lies" Messier decried were plaintiffs' claims that he "took one of France's largest and most profitable corporations to the brink of insolvency."

Under questioning by defense counsel Michael Malone of King & Spalding, Messier did say that, in retrospect, he would have made some business decisions differently as he transformed Vivendi from a water utility company to a global media conglomerate. But he blamed outside economic forces for the 89 percent drop in the company's share price before his resignation in 2002. He said he had come to testify "to clear [his] name entirely."

Messier's message on Friday was emphatic. "I never committed fraud," he said at one point, raising his voice very slightly. "Every decision I made was in good faith, every single one of them....I was and still am proud of what we have achieved."