Vivendi intends to appeal from this judgment

The Jean-Marie Messier shadow still hangs over Vivendi. Yesterday, the leaders of the Group of media and Telecom announced annual results showing good resistance of the business crisis. The action even won 1.68, reaching 18,81 euros on the Paris stock exchange. Yet, eight years after the facts, the great collapse of summer 2002 in which Vivendi approached the default, the Group has not completely turned the page. Yesterday, the Group thus announced that it had decided to pass a provision of EUR 550 million in its 2009 accounts to deal with the damage that could require us shareholders having lodged a complaint against the French group. End of last January, a US jury returned a verdict "curious", according to Jean-Bernard Lévy, the Chairman of the Board of Vivendi, which has Overture against "these lawyers speaking on behalf of the shareholders and trying to extort bribes to Vivendi". The former leaders, among them Jean-Marie Messier, were acquitted while the Group was found guilty of misleading disclosure. Vivendi intends to appeal from this judgment. But in the meantime, even if the amount of damages will not be known until "at least twelve or eighteen months", under the recommendation of his advice, group a provisioned 550 million euros. "This is not an assessment of the damage that we will have to pay because I hope that we will not pay", held to clarify Jean-Bernard Lévy.

A good year despite

This provision will update share, the year 2009 was good for the group. In operational terms, Vivendi signed an agreement with General Electric to give 20 of the capital of NBC Universal, for $ 5.8 billion. And the group bought the Brazilian telecoms Govt. operator for almost EUR 3 billion. This asset "is intended to become one of the main relays for growth for Vivendi in the future", explained its leader. "The growth will come from the opening of the TVG network in cities such as Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, where it is not yet present", he continued. In video games, Activision-Blizzard has registered an operating profit of EUR 484 million in 2009, against 34 million just in the previous year. "Our four major competitors are loss in 2009 and the market declined," noted the President of the Executive Board, highlighting the success of games such as World of Warcraft. In music, Universal still suffers from the collapse of the market of the disk but the sales decline was 1.7 over the last three months of the year. For 2010, no promise a return to growth, Universal table on double-digit operating margins. In telecoms, SFR has remained resilient to the crisis in France, as well as Canal in the audio-visual sector, with recurring revenues and an economic model based on the subscription. The year 2009 was however more difficult for Morocco Telecom. The operator saw its turnover increase by only 3 last year at constant exchange rates and provides "a slight growth" for 2 010. But, for this year, the leaders will say "reasonably prudent given the macroeconomic uncertainties", Vivendi will still pay a dividend of 1.40 per share in may, as the past year. Evidence that the group for now avoid the horrors of the crisis.