A time for silence

Call it the humbling of the shareholder value professors. Investors such as Wendel and Eurazeo, two French funds, have long lectured and pressured companies on how best to extract value – through leverage, asset disposals, or cost cutting. But being listed has its minuses: they must now accept to be judged by the standards they long imposed on others. Live by the sword, perish by the sword. Jean-Bernard Lafonta, the chief executive of Wendel, has been shown the door after a paper loss of almost ...