New boss for France Telecom

SCIENCE fiction writer, company turnaround expert and government appointee Thierry Breton was today confirmed as France Telecom's new boss. The former maths teacher is already credited with turning round computer maker Bull and consumer electronics giant Thomson Multimedia. President Chirac's government now needs him to dig France Telecom out of the e70bn (£43.9bn) debt mountain it has created in three years of rapid expansion.

Breton, 47, succeeds Michel Bon as chairman and chief executive after the latter was forced to resign three weeks ago when the board meeting failed to back his refinancing plans. The French government, which owns 56% of France Telecom, is said to have given Breton a month to come up with a new plan.

France Telecom's debt has quadrupled since 1999 as it took over Orange, Freeserve and data communications group Equant and acquired a large stake in UK cable company NTL.

Breton has been able to use his political influence twice in the past to call on the government to bail out the companies he ran. He has headed Thomson for the past five years, taking it from nearbankruptcy to become the world's fourth-largest consumer electronics manufacturer after obtaining e10.9bn of State aid. For the four years before that, he brought French computer manufacturer Bull back to life.

Breton began his move from academic and novelist to the strange French world of political businessman over dinner in the capital's smartest seafood restaurant, Le Divellec. The guests included Jean-Marie Descarpentries, then boss of Belgian brewing giant Interbrew.

The tousle-haired Breton held court for more than three hours describing his novels Netwar, Vatican III and Softwar, his teaching period in New York's Lycee Francais and his involvement in setting up the French theme park Futuroscope. Descarpentries recalled the young man vividly and, when the government asked him to run Groupe Bull, insisted that Breton was brought in as his lieutenant.

Colleagues recite a number of his mantras including 'Don't think too long' and 'Anything but results is philosophy'. At France Telecom, anything but results will be failure.