Conscience sparks return of $7.8m

By ALEX DUVAL SMITH and KATHERINE GRIFFITHS

It's not often you hear of a business leader deciding to give up his multimillion-dollar pay-off because he had let down the company's shareholders and employees.

But that is exactly what happened in France this week when one of the country's top business leaders, Pierre Bilger, agreed to forgo the €4.1 million ($7.8 million) severance package he received from the troubled Alstom engineering group.

Bilger was at the helm of GEC-Alstom (as it was then known) when it was floated in 1998 and orchestrated an ill-advised purchase that cost the company more than $13 billion.

With a collapsing share price and 5000 job losses, the French Government has been forced to step in with a $7.6 billion rescue package.

But Bilger, 63, clearly has a conscience. After stepping down as chairman and chief executive of Alstom in March, he said he was handing back $7.8 million because he did not want to be a "cause for scandal among the 100,000 Alstom employees whom I had the honour to direct for 12 years, nor among shareholders who trusted me from 1998".

Bilger said the $7.8m was not a golden parachute but a severance deal calculated to correspond to his 20 years' service since he joined the Compagnie Generale d'Electricite, later subsumed into the giant engineering group.

"Whatever anyone may say, I have always been very careful to respect the principles of corporate governance," he said.

From next year he plans to live off a state pension.

"I have my principal residence in Paris, which I bought in 1978.

"I have the use of a country home, which is in the names of my five children. I have €300,000 ($560,300) in a savings account and I am keeping 170,000 Alstom shares because I have always invested my savings in the group."

Analysts suggested Bilger's move had been made after pressure from the French Government.

- INDEPENDENT