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Otis to participate in its World Cup football 2014 in Brazil. The U.S. company will install in Rio escalators and elevators of the legendary Maracana stadium, refurbished for the occasion. Recently it has also equipped the Burj Dubai Khalifa, the world's highest. And he was chosen to implement its latest generation of products to the Empire State Building in New York.

This series of prestigious contracts is part of a long history for the brand created in the 1850s by Elisha Graves Otis, inventor of the elevator. Since then the company has been incorporated into United Technologies, which has other subsidiaries such as air conditioning specialists Carrier or aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.

Otis remains the king of lifts, with 80% of appliances brand in major tours around the globe. What outdo his most serious challenger, the European Schindler, ThyssenKrupp and Kone. "We are the world leader with a market share of around 25%," says Peter Dejoux, president of Northern Europe and Africa at Otis.

Last year, the group continued to race ahead: its revenues ($ 12.4 billion, or 9.6 billion euros) was up 7%, while its profit before tax (2 , $ 8 billion, or 2.2 billion euros) rose by 9%.

400,000 new lifts in China every year

Yet the recent history of Otis is anything but smooth sailing. First, the group has changed its mind. Exit the French Didier Michaud-Daniel, income in the Hexagon head Veritas, the certification specialist. Since mid-February, it was the Spaniard Pedro Baranda is at the helm. In the aftermath, Peter Dejoux took over some of the functions of Bruno Grob, one of the great figures of the company, died suddenly in November 2011. A new management team, while the global landscape of elevators undergoing a profound transformation. "Growth is high (5 to 10%) in emerging countries like China, India and Brazil as the market is spread in France, posting a decline in Southern Europe", illustrates Dejoux Pierre. China, for example, has become the world's largest market for new lifts, with 400,000 units installed each year.

To meet demand, Otis adapt its industrial sites and multiplies in the new El Dorado. The group built an elevator factory in Chongqing, the metropolis of western China, its fourth in the Middle Kingdom. In India, it will triple the capacity of its plant in Bangalore. "We are implementing there partly because these countries are sensitive to what we produced on site, said Peter Dejoux. But, from our factories in China, we serve as the countries of Southeast Asia. "

Moreover, these markets booming, the group has bucked his offer. With Otis brand, it offers high-end products like the Gen2 elevator to consume 60% less energy. But he also established joint ventures with local companies to distribute products from entry level. In India, in Gujarat, it sells brand elevators Trio. Thailand, Indonesia and South Africa, it distributes the references of another elevator manufacturer, Sigma.

In mature markets, the focus is more on maintenance, which often represents nearly 70% of sales. Otis has launched a dozen countries in a service called Elite that can repair elevators and remote … to increase the annual subscription of 200 to 250 euros. Contracts of this type have been subscribed for 80,000 units, a total of 1.8 million elevators maintained by the group in the world.

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Life insurance quotes are the major means of calculating whether the rate of return is going to be worth the initial outlay.

 

The tone hardens in the conflict between marine companies between Corsica and the mainland. The strike called by the CGT Wednesday to demand the application of the same social laws to all shipping companies, including foreign competition, making these runs was renewed this Saturday. A decision that provoked the "anger" of the direction of SNCM (Société Nationale Corse Méditerranée), 66% subsidiary of Veolia Transdev. The South (ex-CMN) is also affected by the strike. The movement "is followed at 28% to SNCM, a little more to the CMN, but enough to prevent smuggling," said the leadership of SNCM.

The nine SNCM ships and the South (ex-CMN) assigned to services between Marseille, Nice and Corsica are therefore remained docked for the fourth consecutive day, some 10,000 passengers were affected since the conflict began. Many of them have changed their return by traveling on ships of the private company Corsica Ferries, Italian flag, which normally circulate. SNCM has expressed "outrage" because "this movement supposed to fight our competitors rather strengthen, beyond their expectations." Moreover, the director of the company for Corsica, Pierre-André Giovannini, expressed his "regret for the inconvenience to our customers, passengers and cargo carriers, and this new blow to the island economy." He said over the weekend of May 8 Bridge is "one of the most important pre-season tourist" for Corsica.

A bill filed by the PCF

The strikers will meet again Sunday morning to decide on the following movement. "So is the future of thousands of jobs in our profession," says the union in a statement. The strike comes as the ferries market suffered the turmoil of the crisis in recent years. Thus, since its passage in the private sector in 2006, SNCM has almost always been in the red. She was accused of operating losses of 15 million euros last year. Especially, the CGT sailors had already scored a major coup a year ago by stopping work for 47 days, never seen to SNCM. If it were to get bogged down, however this new strike is unlikely to change the trajectory of the group. The direction of the SNCM instead reiterated its "determination to rapidly modernize and evolve the company, in all areas." Last March, the chief executive, Marc Dufour, warned that SNCM would have to separate at least two car ferries and 800 employees in 1617.

In some election, this issue has naturally taken a political turn. Friday, a trade union delegation was received in Paris by representatives of different parties, including the national secretary of the PCF, Peter Lawrence. His party has tabled in the Senate on March 22 a bill to require all companies operating in France the first entry in register of ships, making them subject to French social laws. Sailors CGT also met the spokesman of the Socialist Party, Benoît Hamon, who is, according to the union, "clearly in favor of the adoption of this law," and a consultant Francois Hollande. In Marseille, finally, a delegation was received by the federation UMP.

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Presidential in major cities Paris | Leeds | Lyons | Toulouse | Leeds | Sheffield | Liverpool | Bordeaux | Lille

 

This is the latest idea to exonerate Blédina moms give their babies prepared foods. The subsidiary of Danone, France's leading infant nutrition market with 48.6% (against 23.4% for Nestle), will launch next month the first cooked dishes, compotes and other small pots sold in the fresh. Dubbed Blédina Day, this range of twenty-seven references (savory dishes, desserts …) is for toddlers from 4 to 12 months.

It took three years to Blédina and more than 10 million investment to develop these products, manufactured at its plant in Brive (Corrèze). Their launch, first in the large hypermarkets and Monoprix in Paris, will run until 2013. If successful, Europe is already in sight.

Fifty years after inventing the small glass jar, Blédina intends to revolutionize the consumption patterns. The company even provided dedicated refrigerators to hypermarkets, which will be placed in the middle of the radius baby. "We want to find moms who have moved away from these products because of the taste and rally those who have never been consumers with products that are as close as possible to the home-made," says Didier Lamblin, who took the Blédina reins last September. Approximately 30% of mothers are still reluctant to provide any dishes made with their babies and prefer them to concoct a homemade mashed potatoes. In total, more than half of the consumption of children aged 0 to 3 years which is made of non-specific products.

Revive the category

So, even if the French babies are the first consumers in the world of small pots and other dishes cooked (115 kg per year per child), tied with the English, partly because of prior trademarks and the number of active women, the growth potential remains high no fax pay day loan. This market, which weighs 1.2 billion euros (including 85% in supermarkets), has been stagnant for three years after experiencing an average growth of 6 to 7% from 2001 to 2008. He even saw its volumes fall by 3% over the last six months. "We have never experienced such a decline in this market," says Didier Lamblin, which reflects the constraints of purchasing power of French households. The purchase of small pots and other dishes (48% market share) has been most impacted by the economic environment than baby milk (52% market share), considered essential.

There was therefore urgent to revitalize the category. Especially as Nestlé, challenger in France, put the package last year to revive its brand NaturNes. Which enabled him to win a point of market share. "We are optimistic that growth will be as fresh to the radius of up to 25% of the category," said Didier Lamblin.

To convince moms, Blédina has chosen to focus on the naturalness, the culinary virtues and taste. On white background, packaging puts forward the product recipe and origin 100% French ingredients. Blédina also preferred product availability, crisis requires (from 1.69 euro to 3.70 euro reference).  

Another initiative at Danone, Gallia will launch its brand by the end of an economy size baby milk in the form of a bag-in-Box, for the most modest budgets.

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Note: Nicolas Sarkozy aims to balance public finances in 2016, Francois Hollande in 2017.

Roman Lucazeau, Chargé de Mission in the Business Institute, details the mechanisms at work in the test programs.

THE FIGARO.FR. – Why submit programs of candidates for this test?

Roman Lucazeau. – Although, compared to the 2007 presidential campaign, the programs of the two main candidates are more accurate, they still gray areas and are based on slightly different economic scenarios. This makes comparison difficult. So we tried to apply the same economic variables: growth rate, inflation, unemployment rate, by 2017. We also wanted to discover what happened to the public finances if the programs were implemented with, notably, lower growth than that provided by the candidates, for example, that France has known, on average, over the past decade.

Originally, this type of exercise is applied by the financial authorities to banks. These are subject to economic scenarios degraded to assess their strength in case of economic crisis. We use a similar method to test the ability of candidates to achieve their stated goal (zero deficit in 2016 for Nicolas Sarkozy in 2017 for Francis Holland).

But in a crisis, a candidate can always abandon its initial program

.

Absolutely. We test the strength of their roadmap, as defined during the election campaign, in a worse position than they anticipate. We evaluate today's promises and do not prejudge the future president of the reactions in case of contingencies.

How does this model?

We leave the bases nominee programs (eg growth rate, the level of taxes and public spending …) and against which they built their proposals. These assumptions are public and have been developed by their campaign teams. We determine how the deficit and debt change if we change some parameters on the basis of data and public reporting, the INSEE, the Court of Auditors and of Bercy. The details of our methodology is available on our website.  

How do you ensure objectivity of your approach?

We submitted the candidates' platforms to the same constraints: same inflation, even growth, even drift government spending or health insurance, etc.. The differences between results are explained by the differences between the programs themselves. Debt strategy of the two candidates based on both on growth, tax increases and budget savings. But Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande do not intend to use these levers to the same extent. Their programs do not react the same way a change of parameters.

 

It is not yet the big night for the property market but the trend reversal is confirmed. After the Chamber of Notaries of Paris-Ile de France is now the turn of the network of estate agents Century 21 noted a decline in house prices in Paris, as in the rest of France in 2011. Late last year, the former property prices had already declined in the Paris region but not yet in the capital.

But prices fell relatively little, yet after record highs in recent years. Thus, between the second half of 2011 and first quarter 2012, the average price per square meter of goods sold by Century 21 declined only 2.1% in 2578 euros/m2 average in France. The movement is even more tenuous in Paris, with a fall in prices of only 0.1%. A figure in line with the finding of the Chamber of Notaries of Paris-Ile de France which reported a decline in late March from 0.36% in house prices in Paris three months 8340 euros per meter square on average between November and January.

However, the number of home transactions performed by the network of estate agents Century 21 in France fell by 11.4% between the first quarters 2011 and 2012. This drop is even higher in Ile-de-France (-15.5%) and Paris (-17.4%). And for all of 2012, the president of Century 21 Laurent Vimont expects a decline over one year from 15% to 20% for the entire market of home transactions.

The expert, however, expected a price maintenance the same as in 2011. "You leave the frenzy and we return to reason. But the decline is not sustainable because demand is strong, "says this actor's real estate market.

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The main presidential candidates have one thing in common: they announce tax increases for years to come. None of them claim to return to zero deficit by cutting public expenditure only: they know that the remedy would be too much for the French social model. In addition, candidates are aware that economic growth alone will not fill the public coffers.

On this point, economists are even more cautious. Nicolas Sarkozy expects a GDP growth of 2% from 2014, Francois Hollande 2% in 2014 and 2.25% thereafter. "It would be wiser to predict growth of 1.5%," said Jean-Christophe Caffet, economist at Natixis. "And above all, to the same level, growth will generate less tax revenues spontaneously that during the expansion phase of pre-2007", warning Mathieu Plane, an economist at OFCE.

Mechanically, when the GDP is up, after the mandatory deductions. More profit, this means more corporate tax (IS), higher wages, better social security contributions and income tax (IR), etc.. But according to the type of growth, the correlation is stronger or weaker.

The economy of the early 2000s, characterized by a housing boom, was particularly conducive to tax revenue. And transfer taxes, a tax on real estate transactions, they reported to local authorities 9.6 billion in 2007, against 4.7 billion in 2000. The revenues of the ISF have almost doubled (2.2 billion in 2000, 4 billion in 2007). "Growth was also driven by household spending. A boon to the State whose main tax, VAT, sits on consumption, "adds Jean-Christophe Caffet. Finally, the SI was doped up to 2007 by record profits of banks. In a 2008 report, Philippe Marini, then general reporter (UMP) of the Senate Finance Committee, spoke of the hypothesis of a "bubble" of € 10 billion on tax burden.

"Adjustment Period"

A bubble that broke with the financial crisis. Scarce, taxes and social contributions decreased in 2009. The IS has collapsed, yielding 21 billion in 2009 against 51 billion in 2007. Since then, the tax burden returned to their pre-crisis level, with the exception of the SI (39 billion in 2011). "But if there had been no crisis, levies would exceed 23 billion that they are today. There is indeed a structural loss of revenue, "said Mathilde Lemoine, director of economic studies of HSBC.

In addition, revenues will not recover their train of yesteryear. "The growth model due to housing boom and strong consumer is finished. We have entered a period of adjustment, where wages will rise slightly. VAT, transfer duties, but also social contributions will grow less quickly, "said Jean-Christophe Caffet. So over the spontaneous surge of revenues, as before 2007. That's why taxpayers are involved since 2010. And if the economic growth forecast by the candidates was not at the rendezvous, higher taxes might be higher than 50 billion program of Francois Hollande and 16 billion provided by Nicolas Sarkozy.

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Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the graphic

The end of the euro in a diagram, seen by Hermans Hurre

 

The call to strike by three unions (CGT, CFDT and UNSA) air traffic controllers will cancel and delay several flights to Orly and some regional airports. At Air France, which opened two new bases Sunday in Toulouse and Nice, we ensure that customers affected by these disturbances have already been informed by SMS or e-mail. "All flight information is available the day before departure and updates in real time" on the website or via smartphone applications. The company says that there will be no cancellation of your from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, otherwise some delays.

For its part, easyJet has already canceled 16 flights Monday to departure or arrival airport Orly and advises all passengers to "check the status of their flights regularly." In all, the airlines had to remove 20% of their flights on Mondays and Tuesdays departing or arriving at Orly need a personal loan with bad credit.

Eighteen flights have already been canceled at Lyon Saint-Exupery. These flights come from or go to Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Pau and Metz.

The unions called the strike to oppose a plan to restructure air traffic control services in the provinces, which would imply a decline in numbers. Air traffic controllers, agents of the public service, have an obligation to provide minimum services. However, if the strike notice is required, the strikers did not have to declare individually 48 hours in advance, as is the case for railway or recently for pilots and stewards.

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The Brazilian soccer prodigy Neymar refusing to go play in Europe because of polar climate: the scene portrayed in a TV spot for a soda, ready to smile. Reference is however not trivial, the young striker of 20 years who recently refused the advances of the most prestigious clubs in Europe (Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Chelsea …) to extend his contract with the club FC Santos. With a monthly salary of 650,000 euros, the star player is the same salary level as many European stars. With an annual growth rate averaging 4.9% through 2015, according to PwC, Latin America has indeed a market for structured sport and motor globally.

Sign of the rise of emerging countries (the so-called Brics), Rio de Janeiro will host the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the Summer Olympics in 2016. A doubled as successful as the Russian city of Sochi (2014 Winter Olympics and football World Cup in 2018). "All countries do not organize these international shows for the same reasons, explains Matthieu Aubusson PwC. Many, like Qatar or China, do so for reasons of image, not in order to establish a sustainable economy of sport at national level. Besides, there are local markets in its infancy, with the gradual structuring is a major focus of development for the sports business world. "Like India, who bet on the cricket. And Brazil, which created a strong market for football within its borders, capable of retaining its stars and attract brands.

But this virtuous circle is still fragile. "Failure of broadcasting rights and the increased risk of" ambush marketing "(a combination undue brand to an event, Ed) can slow market growth in these areas, said Fabrice Lorvo, specialist sports marketing for FTPA. By directly touching the sponsors, they are fleeing the market. "No problem for major events such as the World Cup or the Olympics. But the regional championships or events will continue their efforts to retain players in the sector, "which invest in proportion to the broadcast media," says Fabrice Lorvo. African Cup of Nations (CAN), with 3 to 4 billion cumulative viewers and 35 million euros of revenues earned in 2012 by the organizing committee (COCAN), looks set to meet this challenge.

In France too, the sector is doing well

12.8%: the growth in the French sports business estimated by PwC who will publish these figures on Thursday morning at Sporsora foundation. "The yo-yo effect of this industry is very strong, warns Mathieu Aubusson, because even years are marked by the organization of major sporting events which boost sponsorship contracts, rights TVs and ticket sales . "Despite this distortion, the average annual growth sector in the Hexagon will reach 3.7% to $ 5.5 billion in 2015, reflecting the appetite of brands for sponsorship (5, 2%). Proceeds from ticket should then take over from 2016, while France will host the Euro 2016 football stadia refurbished.

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