JULY 2, 2002

Orange up for sale?

THE French government has responded to stories that it is going to re-nationalize France Telecom with a very definite "Non" and that means that the struggling French telecommunications company needs to find other ways to refinance its huge debts. The obvious route forward would be the partial sale of its successful mobile phone subsidiary Orange, the sponsor of the Arrows F1 team.

Orange's future in Formula 1 is, at the moment, rather less than certain with the Arrows program (cheap though it was) not living up to expectations. The company's sponsorship activities in recent months seem to have moved away from big sponsorships towards a multitude of small deals covering a huge array of sports and other leisure activities with a typically quirky series of advertisements which add to the brand-building efforts of the firm.