Authorities aren't commenting on their probes, but sources familiar with the investigations say they are concentrating on what Messier and other officers knew about the company's liquidity crisis, when they knew it and what they conveyed to shareholders.
Investigators are expected to pay special attention to Messier's actions after emerging from a tumultuous June 25 board meeting. In a detailed statement he issued the next day, Messier said, "Vivendi is confident of its capacity to meet its anticipated obligations over the next 12 months."
During a conference call with analysts later that day, he downplayed market fears that the company was in a cash crunch.
But less than a week later, Messier was forced out by the board and replaced by a new chief executive, Jean-Rene Fourtou. Within hours of taking over the helm, Fourtou learned that he faced "a terrible liquidity crisis," he would later tell analysts.
"If Mr. Messier had stayed, the company would have gone bankrupt in 10 days," Fourtou also told French officials in a government hearing on Vivendi's fall.
Certainly, there was evidence at the time Messier delivered his statement that Vivendi was facing possible cash problems. At the June 25 meeting, for example, the board hotly debated a Goldman Sachs report on the company's financial situation that laid out various scenarios, including one that warned Vivendi could face serious financial problems if it could not sell assets or issue bonds.
But Vivendi's financial picture grew far more bleak in the days after the board meeting and the sanguine outlook delivered by Messier. Messier is expected to argue that he could not have foreseen the dramatic changes that were about to unfold.
Less than a week after his June 26 statements, German lender Bayerische Landesbank rescinded a nearly $1-billion backup line of credit to Vivendi, a bank source familiar with the matter confirmed.
Making matters worse was the refusal by the British bank Barclays to extend new financing after a $740-million line of credit matured. There are conflicting reports of when that refusal came. A source at Barclays said it was June 24. Another Vivendi document puts the date at June 28. Either way, two sources close to Vivendi's former management team say that Hannezo, the former chief financial officer, did not alert Messier that negotiations to extend the loan had failed until Messier's ouster on July 1. Hannezo declined to comment.
