Text 17

supply stake ran to partnerships of truly

objectives by major activities

Vivendi, the French utilities and communications group, has a long history going back to 1853. In that year the Government created Campagnie Generale des Eaux. The founders had two ____ 1 ____ to irrigate the countryside for farming and to supply water to towns and cities in France.

In 1880 a treaty gave Generale des Eaux the right to ____ 2 ____ water to Venice, and then Constantinople and Oporto came soon after. By the time of the centenary celebrations in 1953 Generale des Eaux supplied water to eight million people in France.

In the 1960s and 1970s the company began ____ 3 ____ in the area of civil construction and built a large tower block in the La Defense business district of Paris.

During the 1980s Generale des Eaux joined with the Havas media group to create Canal Plus, a pay TV channel. They also took a controlling ____ 4 ____ in the civil engineering giant, SGE. In the 1990s they won ____ 5 ____contracts in the Asia Pacific region and in Latin America.

Jean-Marie Messier became CEO in 1996 and ____ 6 ____ the company along American lines. He sold $5 billion in assets and cut the workforce ____ 7 ____ 10%. All this meant that an annual loss ____ 8 ____ $600 million turned into a profit of $320 million. In 1998 he changed the name of the group ____ 9 ____ Vivendi and soon after made a series of ____ 10 ____ and acquisitions in the telecommunications industry.

Operations in North America grew very quickly after this and in 2000 Vivendi bought Seagram to become a ____ 11 ____international media and communications company.

Text 18

financial for other privatisation finally

through most markets services continues

1) Argentina is one of the most deregulated ____ 1 ____ in the world. The ____ 2 ____ process started in the 1990s, and has included sectors such as telecommunications, utilities and ____ 3 ____ services. The Argentine telecoms market was fully deregulated in November 2000 and there are now five million cellular lines and six million homes with cable television ____ 4 ____. Water was decentralized before being privatized. Aquas Argentinas, the local water supply company ____ 5 ____ the city of Buenos Aires and all the municipalities in Greater Buenos Aires, is the largest privatized water utility in the world.

2) Imagine a country that ____ 6 ____ for 4,200 km from dry deserts in the north, ____ 7 ____ the industrial heartland in the centre, to lakes and forestry plantations in the south, and ____ 8 ____ to the ends of the earth in Patagonia and Antarctica. Welcome to Chile! It’s a very diverse country, with the Pacific Ocean to one side and the Andes to the ____ 9 ____. You can swim in the sea and ski in the mountains all in the same day. There are business opportunities in many areas, and the financial services sector is the ____ 10 ____ sophisticated in Latin America.