Alstom ‘should be good buy for France’

France will be making a sound investment by taking a stake in Alstom, its chief executive said yesterday, adding, however, that the government would be buying in too late to have a say in the use of proceeds from its tie-up with General Electric.

France won an option to buy 20% of Alstom from conglomerate Bouygues on Sunday, in an eleventh-hour deal clearing the way for the agreed sale of most of Alstom’s energy business to GE.

The agreement drew a close to a two-month battle for the future of Alstom — a prized industrial company struggling with slow demand for power equipment in post-recession energy markets — that the French government said it would not allow to be “devoured” by a foreign firm.