DOING BUSINESS WITH THE FRENCH

In 1968 I was 25 years old and afraid of nobody.

I had the title of Managing Director of a small special steel mill in Belgium. Since I was expanding the production capacity continuously and exporting ever increasing quantities, it was natural for me to start thinking about France.

France had practically nationalized their steel industry while their biggest customers, the coal mines, were also nationalized.  Ergo, the French state steel companies were supplying to the French state coal mines at astronomical prices.

How to break this closed circuit?

Traveling to Paris, after trying 14 days to find the responsible person in the ministry of energy, I sent a telex to the "Director General of the ministry of Energy, department Coal Mines", even though I hadn't a clue what his name was.

Arriving unannounced the next morning at the ministry I bluntly show my telex to a clerk with a pretentious uniform, and, miracle of miracles, he calls somebody who calls somebody and another uniformed clerk appears who guides me through the portals of heaven.
 
I am ushered in a palatial office, compared to which the Oval Office is a cubicle, and I am introduced to a rotund gentleman behind a massive desk: Director General Vautran of the French Coal Mines. My telex had specified why I wanted to see this Emperor of the French Mines.

He looks at me and my young face, asks me my age and: "Do you drink wine?"  I notice that his minions – there were at least a half-dozen –  instantly disappear on these words.

I admit that I like a glass from time to time and let slip that my father-in-law is a wine merchant. He ducks behind his imperial desk and hauls a 5 liter (1½ gallon) belly bottle of wine, fills two glasses, hands me one, says "santé" and gulps his down.

I follow the procedure and understand immediately the flight of his minions: the wine is altered by adding pure alcohol, like the Greeks make retsina. Anyway, I swallow the brew and wait until the procedure of pouring and finishing two additional servings.

Then the Director General asks me where I want to eat, at 9:30am. I tell him that this is Paris, his private hunting ground and that he must chose. I feel already much better and don't worry anymore why I came to Paris, for I don't give a damn.

He tells his secretary where to reserve a table and gets back to the serious business of killing 5 liters of wine.  I try to talk a little bit about business but get strafed by an obliterating piercing of his hawk's eyes.

At 12 Noon exactly his limousine is in front of the ministry and we enter, me carefully and he energetically.  By now I have found out that he is 67 years old, has his own vineyard in Provence, and is unable to leave his job since he is the only one who can control the socialist and communist unions of mine workers. He was once a union boss himself.

We are driven to one of the most expensive restaurants of Paris, where we are whisked to one of the best tables, and immediately served without asking a chilled bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

During an elaborate three-course meal, the Veuve is followed by a bottle of  Nuits Saint Georges Burgundy, and finally vintage Calvados apple brandy for finishing off. Not one word about my purpose of visiting his imperial highness.

I informed him that I had another appointment at 4pm in my hotel and asked him to drop me off there. He agrees and gives me an appointment at 8pm, he will pick me up. Fine, I go to my room at the Hotel Le Grand right next to the Opera and go straight to sleep.

At 8pm the bastard is back and in top shape.  We proceed to another five-star restaurant and the whole works again. As I did at lunch, I pay for everything without question.

At around 11pm he announces that he has reserved a luxury cathouse where he knows this "absolutely out of this world young girl," to whom he introduces me like she was his blushing fiancé. I would never have consumed what I did if I had known his final game plan, but what the heck.

We leave the maison close at 4am and in his car he finally says:  "What do you want?" in a very rough blunt way.  In the same way, I say "I want this, this, and that, and no price BS!!!"  OK he says, you deserve it and any sissies who don't like it can go to hell, come to my office at 11am.

At 11am I am rewarded with looks of respect all around and I go home with a perfect year's contract for the French coal mines.

Until he retired at the tender age of 70, we repeated the same program described above every time I came to Paris, about every 3 months. I had all kinds of problems with the French steel mills and he solved them all in a few minutes. He considered me his soul mate.
 
Not the kind of French tale you would expect? Believe me, it happened. Years afterwards, a French competitor I respected asked me how I did it, as he never even managed a meeting with the old bastard. 
 
He was my friend until he died.

Doing business with the French sure is different from Doing Business with Germans.

"Mercury Traveler" is a Flemish entrepreneur and well-known denizen of the TTP User Forum.