Word: frenchness
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...chronically overdue super-jumbo, the A380. Instead, the company has hit turbulence again. This time, however, it's not production delays and boardroom infighting, it's news that market regulatory officials are investigating a potentially massive insider trading scandal at EADS, Airbus's parent. According to documents cited in French press accounts, as many as 1,200 people may wind up targeted by legal action, including some of the loftiest members of France's business and political elite...
...Tuesday, the daily Le Figaro published details of a preliminary report by France's Financial Markets Authority (AMF) investigating the sale of stock options by EADS executives between November 2005 and March 2006. The paper said that initial findings in the on-going inquiry - which both the AMF and French legal officials declined to comment on - had turned its attention to 21 current and former EADS executives, and as many as 1,200 other shareholders who may have used inside knowledge of troubles with the A380 program to dump millions worth of stock before that bad news was revealed...
...Arnaud Lagardère, a former EADS co-chairman whose defense and press group still owns 7.5% of EADS. Lagardère - who has not only denied any wrongdoing, but has threatened litigation to address damage done to his reputation by the reports - is also a personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who once famously called the businessman "my brother." In addition to Lagardère, three other former co-chairmen and co-chief executives have been named in media reports as inquiry suspects, as have a number of current EADS and Airbus officials...
...June's legislative elections served as Economy Minister for the last conservative government. Breton is described in the AMF finding as having received a memo from an unidentified source in December 2005, warning EADS would be entering "a zone of turbulence." The memo to Breton also purportedly urged the French government to lower its 15% stake in the group before flying got rough for EADS, which would allow the state to "profit from the current value of shares, which incorporates only the good news of the last financial year." Breton responded to the Le Figaro report stressing the state...
...possibility that she was pregnant - only that Dodi was the father. A physical examination of Diana's body didn't reveal any signs that she was pregnant. But a pregnancy in its early stages would be difficult to spot without an autopsy, Baker conceded, which was never performed. The French didn't run a pregnancy test before the body was embalmed, because they didn't see the need, and afterwards it was too late. Yes, Diana was believed to be on the Pill and, true, she never mentioned being pregnant to any of her friends or family. But, Baker said...