Twist in Messier's £14.5m battle

JEAN-MARIE Messier suffered a fresh setback in his attempts to wrest a highly controversial e20.6m (£14.5m) pay-off from his former employer Vivendi Universal after the US Securities and Exchange Commission intervened to prevent immediate payment.

The SEC filed a lawsuit asking the Federal Court in New York City to order the company to place the disputed money in a ring-fenced escrow account.

It invoked the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in the wake of the Enron scandal, which allows the SEC to freeze extraordinary payments to company directors.

Vivendi Universal has vowed to fight an earlier US court ruling on Monday ordering the French company to pay the money to former chief executive Messier, who is accused of nearly bankrupting one of the country's biggest companies.

The media and entertainment giant's current chief executive, Jean-Rene Fourtou, has vowed not to pay a cent to Messier, who negotiated the deal secretly in July last year with two board directors.

Fourtou's stance reflects public outrage over executive compensation and generous pay-offs at a time of rising unemployment and weak company performance.

'It is one thing to make money when things are going well. It's quite another when the company has done badly and people are being fired,' said Sophie L'Helias, a Washington specialist in European corporate governance.