Leftist Minister To Interrogate Peugeot Family Over Dividends. What Dividends?
The Peugeot family will receive an invitation from French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, but not for tea and cookies.
The minister “plans to summon members of the Peugeot family to explain why the car maker had continued to pay dividends even as it was facing mounting difficulties,” Reuters says.
PSA Peugeot Citroen said last week it would cut 8,000 jobs in France and close a plant in France in 2014. Currently, GM’s alliance partner PSA hemorrhages some €200 million ($244 million) a month. As if that is not enough pain, the minister will turn the screws a bit more.
Said the minister (who actually is “Minister of productive recovery”, hype is alive and well) :
“The Peugeot family has a number of things to explain to us and I will invite them to the ministry so that we can discuss them. Why were there certain financial operations at the time when Peugeot was already starting to experience difficulties, particularly dividend payments?”
The Peugeot family most likely will have questions of its own. Such as:
“Quels dividendes, Monsieur?”
According to PSA’s dividend schedule, the last time dividends were paid was for 2010, and that after a two year dividendless dry spell. “Given the Group’s 2011 results” PSA’s annual shareholders’ meeting of 25 April 2012 voted “that no dividend be paid in respect of 2011.”
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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The great thing about keeping the government out of the car business is you don't need grandstanding political leaders wringing their hands about what the owners are paying themselves. If they pay themselves too much, they simply go out of business.
because they [the family] used PSA like a cash cow. Hollande wants a bovine cull from the family. That way his government is spared most of the heat.
au large de la tête !
If anyone cares, PSA Peugeot Citroen generated over €1.3 billion in profits in 2010, the last time dividends were paid (at €1.10 per share). When they slipped into the red in 2011, dividends were cut off and have remained that way since. I guess you could argue that, even when they were profitable, it was still a pretty thin margin and that, in retrospect, the money might have been better spent elsewhere; but there doesn't seem to really be anything illegal, or even really unethical, about what they did 2 years ago.