As presidential rivals debated the roots of unemployment during the recent campaign, many companies held off on announcing job cuts to avoid inflaming an already fraught political issue. But now that voters have chosen Socialist François Hollande over center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy to be their next president starting on Tuesday, labor unions say many large French companies are preparing to announce large layoffs in the weeks and months ahead, The Wall Street Journal reported.

After a strong rally at the beginning of the year, French bank shares are back in the doldrums, Dow Jones reported. Despite launching major restructuring plans, bolstering the capital buffers regulators say are needed to absorb possible future losses, slashing their enormous balance sheets, reducing their risk exposure and lowering their funding needs, their shares are once again languishing close to last summer's painful lows.

While French President Nicholas Sarkozy paints Socialist challenger Francois Hollande as a threat to the stable euro and France's fiscal discipline, such as it is, economic reality will set a similar course for whomever wins the presidency, Reuters reported in an analysis. The political rhetoric has aimed to magnify the gap between their economic programmes, but it broadly boils down to a timing difference; conservative Sarkozy has committed to balancing the budget in 2016, while Hollande, who leads polls by as much as 10 percentage points for the May 6 runoff, has set a 2017 deadline.

Dexia, the bailed-out Franco-Belgian lender, said on Wednesday it was looking into a severance package granted to former chairman Pierre Richard, forced to resign after the group's initial rescue, Reuters reported. The French government, which injected 3 billion euros ($3.94 billion) into Dexia's 2008 rescue alongside 3.4 billion from Belgium and Luxembourg, earlier this year asked the bank to examine how it could recover funds paid to the former chairman as part of his exit package. Newspaper Le Monde reported that Dexia's board had mandated a labour law specialist to look into the case.

Progress made by France's largest banks with restructuring plans they launched late last year in response to the European debt crisis should help ease pressure on their ratings, Fitch Ratings said Tuesday, Dow Jones reported. French banks were hit hard last summer when investors retreated from the euro zone because of deepening concerns over their exposure to sovereign debt in Europe's weaker economies, forcing the main listed players to start reducing assets and to cut funding needs. Fitch said that because of those actions they have since won back some market confidence.

France has enviable economic strengths: an educated and productive workforce, more big firms in the global Fortune 500 than any other European country, and strength in services and high-end manufacturing, The Economist reported. However, the fundamentals are much grimmer. France has not balanced its books since 1974. Public debt stands at 90% of GDP and rising. Public spending, at 56% of GDP, gobbles up a bigger chunk of output than in any other euro-zone country—more even than in Sweden. The banks are undercapitalised.

Nortel Networks Inc, a former telecoms company that is liquidating in bankruptcy, won a dismissal of some claims by European affiliates that were seeking a large chunk of the company's $9 billion cash pile, Reuters reported. Nortel's British, Irish and French affiliates had sought more than $3 billion, claiming Nortel Networks Inc has breached its fiduciary duties to the European businesses by stripping them of cash and leaving them insolvent. A Delaware bankruptcy court dismissed those claims in part because Nortel Networks, or NNI, was not a director of the European affiliates.

Private investor Gary Klesch said on Thursday that his Swiss-based company has submitted the only bid for insolvent refiner Petroplus' French plant Petit-Couronne, Reuters reported. Asked if it was true that his firm had made an offer for the refiner, he said: "It is. We were told by the court there were no other bids ...We are in negotiations on the others." Klesch also confirmed an earlier report that his firm had pledged to invest 160 million euros in the refinery over five years and to retain around 410 of 550 jobs.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday he will establish a new tax linked to nationality to prevent rich taxpayers from leaving the country and taking up residency in other countries with lower tax rates, if he's elected for a second term in May, Dow Jones reported. "I want tax payment and nationality to be linked," Sarkozy said, answering questions in an election show on TF1.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday offered plans to create a minimum tax on profit of large companies if re-elected for a second term in elections this spring, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Sarkozy, who is trailing challenger Socialist candidate François Hollande in polls, made the comments as the election campaign heats up. and the two front-runners seek to gain traction. Mr. Hollande proposed a tax of a different nature last week: a special 75% tax bracket on France's wealthiest individuals that was well received by voters. Mr.