«Les Echos»: fun to run

Why would a failed newspaper owner want to buy another one at a mind-boggling premium? Bernard Arnault, the controlling shareholder of luxury behemoth LVMH, badly wants Les Echos, France’s major business daily. France’s richest man is ready to fork out E250m, or 25 times the paper’s 2006 operating profit, to get it. That is nearly in the same price league that Rupert Murdoch is offering for Dow Jones. It has certainly scared away other suitors who can’t see how they could ever create value if th...