Last Thursday Vivendi Universal, the entertainment and communications company, finalized a deal with the French government that would reduce its tax bill by several billion over a number of years in exchange for creating hundreds of new jobs in the country. The deal is the result of months of negotiations with the French finance ministry. It allows the company to use billions of losses it accumulated since the year 2000 to offset profit from non-wholly-owned subsidiaries, which it previously could not do.
August 29 2004