As George W Bush famously said, there is no French word for entrepreneur. The same might be said of that fabulous aphorism "Reculer pour mieux sauter". And France's Napoleon of the exchanges, Jean-François Théodore, is having a jolly good go at showing how apt these expressions are with his latest deal involving the London Clearing House to create LCH.Clearnet.
On the face of it, Théodore looks as though he has made a tactical withdrawal from one of Europe's leading central counterparties: or, as the French would say, he is going backwards "to jump higher". The Euronext boss is foregoing a chunky 9% of operating profits in the first quarter by cutting his stake in Clearnet. Admittedly, he has struck a good deal and shown his entrepreneurialism â he is being paid handsomely for selling his shares to the market's users and retains a sufficient slice to make decent money out of future earnings.
