Protecting your own

The Alstom rescue package provided by the French government moved the goalposts in the corporate universe – or so say Alstom’s miffed competitors. Nesche Yazgan investigates the moral issue of how far state governments should go to protect their national champions

Inefficiency is its own reward. That was probably what Alstom creditors were thinking when they first heard the news that the French government was embarking on another Baywatch mission, having already rescued France Télécom only eight months previously. But in the case of Alstom, France has come out of the closet and is executing an unashamedly explicit bailout of a major industrial.

At a time when the European corporate bond market is going through its first down cycle, all the