VIVENDI UNIVERSAL

ONE MAN, ONE ENTERPRISE, ONE DESTINY

EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER

Jean-Marie Messier was born in 1956 in Grenoble, a city in the Alps of southeastern France. The son of an accountant, he was a serious and hardworking student in his high school years. Although he failed on his first attempt to gain entry to the École Polytechnique, the training ground of France's business elite, he retook the entrance examinations the following year and was admitted. He did well in his studies, graduating from the school with high marks in 1976. Messier then attended the École Nationale d'Administration, or ENA, the traditional educational route to a high position in the French government. After completing his course of study at ENA in 1982, he worked for four years in the French ministry of finance as an auditor of state-owned corporations. He became the chief of staff of the French finance ministry in 1986, several months before his thirtieth birthday.

Instead of climbing higher up the political ladder, however, Messier surprised observers by leaving government service in 1988 for a position with Lazard Frères et Compagnie, a major French investment bank. Messier quickly became the youngest partner in the bank's history. During his years at Lazard, Messier gave advice to French companies about expanding their businesses in the United States. A French journalist said of him at the time, "He was someone who was having an exceptional career. He was growing in power very quickly. He got the reputation of someone who was a very quick thinker" (BBC News, July 19, 2002).
THE MAKEOVER OF CGE
Messier's next step in his career was to join the Compagnie Générale des Eaux, or CGE, in 1994 as its chief executive. CGE was an old-fashioned French water company, founded by Emperor Napoleon III in 1853. Its chief businesses in the early 1990s were garbage collection and sewage plant operation. Messier lost little time, however, in remaking CGE after he moved up to the