France earned $11.5 billion from selling state...

France earned $11.5 billion from selling state firms to private shareholders last year, $914 million more than expected, the Finance Ministry said on Sunday. This brought to $12.2 billion the amount transferred to government coffers under a privatization program begun in 1986 by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s conservative government. Finance Minister Edouard Balladur has said the ambitious scheme, abruptly interrupted by the world stock market crash in October, could be resumed on a small scale if market conditions permitted.