Big bosses fear later and slower recovery than elsewhere

Have the leaders of major French groups gone from excess optimism to fits of pessimism? At the end of February, when the coronavirus pandemic had barely reached the north of Italy, they claimed that it was one of those upheavals which have been agitating the world every two years for fifteen years; one of the "unexpected" that international giants of industry and services are now used to digesting; many even bet then on a rapid and strong recovery ...

The ace. Two and a half months (including eight weeks of confinement in France) later, the tone radically changed. Behind the official prudence of business leaders, already far from the optimism of the time, hides in fact a very strong fear: that of a lasting stall in the French economy.

"Thanks to partial unemployment, activity has stopped much more in France than elsewhere in Europe," said one of them on condition of anonymity. Some companies have

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