That led to the firing of Jean-Marie Messier, the CEO, early in July.

FORBES: Edgar's encore

But the recent travails of other media firms, such as Time Warner, and Vivendi under Jean-Marie Messier, changed Mr Mohn's mind somewhat.

ECONOMIST: Face value

With Jean-Marie Messier's resignation from Vivendi this month, we count at least ten CEOs on our list who have left under a cloud in the past year.

FORBES: Under fire

And then there is Vivendi, a sewerage-to-films conglomerate that Jean-Marie Messier, its French boss, ran into the ground through a combination (familiar to Americans) of hubris and creative accounting.

ECONOMIST: Enron: one year on

Of course that's going to be much more challenging for Vivendi, which just saw CEO Jean-Marie Messier replaced last week by Jean-Rene Fourtou when shareholder dissatisfaction hit a crescendo.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Nobody, in her view, personifies the supremely self-confident, narcissistic type better than Jean-Marie Messier, the former head of Vivendi Universal, who steered the one-time media giant close to bankruptcy in 2002.

ECONOMIST: France

Jean-Marie Messier Jean-Marie Messier , former chief executive of media giant Vivendi Universal who was tossed into the Paris gutters last month, is nursing his wounds in a holiday exile by the Mediterranean, there to write a book about his downfall, Le Parisien reported on Friday.

FORBES: Faces In The News