Banking On the Future

His business strategy has been debunked and his love of the spotlight lampooned. He has been ousted as head of the world’s second-largest media company. His former employer has vowed not to pay him a dime in severance. And, to top it off, he and his family soon will have to give up a $17-million penthouse on Park Avenue.

Most people would slink away in humiliation. Not Jean-Marie Messier, the fallen media king turned New York exile. The former chairman and chief executive of Vivendi Universal -- who once labeled himself half-jokingly as “master of the world” -- is as self-assured and defiant as ever.

Messier sees himself largely as a victim of outside forces: market rumors, nationalistic French politicians and a coterie of powerful business leaders who turned on him.

“I didn’t pay enough attention to them,” Messier said in his first in-depth interview since his downfall. “When I was in a weak position they took advantage of me.”

Still, Messier said he is not looking backward.

“I’m not looking to who betrayed me.... I’m looking forward. I have a great future in the U.S. and Europe. I want to build a new story.”

The 45-year-old Messier these days is caught between two chapters in his life. He has just completed a draft of a 300-page tell-all book based on a journal he kept about his rise and fall at Vivendi and his observations about the current media market. The book, he said, was a form of therapy after the shock of losing his job. He says he isn’t sure when or whether he will publish it.

Now he’s turning his attention to a new, far more modest enterprise than running a global media empire. Messier, a former investment partner at French investment bank Lazard, returned to his roots last week when he incorporated what he describes as a “boutique investment bank” in Delaware. The firm, called Messier Partners, will handle private equity investments in media and other sectors.

“I’ve gone from 380,000 employees to just one. I know it will be a challenge.... My only revenge is my future success,” he said during the two-hour interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan.

The hotel also is where Messier and his then-lieutenants negotiated some of the major media deals that transformed Vivendi from a staid 150-year-old water utility into a flashy global entertainment player and owner of one of Hollywood’s hottest studios.

Success, however, eluded Messier during his two-year reign at Vivendi, where he arranged a slew of acquisitions that puzzled investors and racked up $19 billion in media-related debts. Concerns about the company’s high debt, strategy and complex balance sheet spooked investors and analysts, causing a 70% fall in Vivendi’s stock price before Messier’s ouster in July.

Messier is mostly unapologetic about Vivendi’s failures. Still looking very much the part of a jet-setting media mogul, he wore a charcoal-gray flannel suit with a mauve tie and was carrying his ever-present cell phone and oversized leather-bound daily planner.

“What’s done is done,” he said, appearing tanned and relaxed after a three-month hiatus from the corporate world. “I have no regrets.”

He staunchly defended his business strategy for creating a global entertainment giant that combined European wireless and cable television with American movies such as the “Mummy” franchise and musical acts, from Eminem to U2.

“When I read that Vivendi has decided to continue on the track of being a global media company, I was pleased,” Messier said. “As many people are saying, it’s a Messier strategy without Messier.”

He admits only a few significant missteps as chief of Vivendi. Among them: failure to convince French board members that they should sell off the core utility business. He also acknowledges courting too much publicity for himself by posing for magazines such as Paris Match, where he was photographed skating in Central Park.

“Vivendi attracted much more attention than it should have, in part because I was overexposed to the media,” he said. “That’s one thing I do regret because I know it hurt Vivendi Universal.”

Despite Messier’s contention that the company is following his strategy, that is not the perception inside Vivendi. His successor, Jean-Rene Fourtou, declined to comment, but sources close to the CEO said his decision to keep Vivendi in the entertainment business was more a reflection of market realities than an affirmation of Messier’s goal of creating a rival to AOL Time Warner Inc.

The sources note that Fourtou already has undone key parts of the empire Messier put together -- for example, unloading the money-losing Internet venture Vizzavi. The Internet portal was a centerpiece of Messier’s strategy for using mobile phones as distribution pipelines for movies, music and games.

Messier would not comment specifically on the financial crisis he left behind, but he said the company was hurt most by unsubstantiated market rumors.

Others disagree. “They didn’t have enough near-term funding to get them through the second half of the year,” said Michael Nathanson, a media analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Despite their criticism of him, Messier was restrained in his comments about Fourtou and Edgar Bronfman Jr., whose family led the boardroom coup against Messier. Bronfman was acting only because his family’s fortune was plummeting along with Vivendi’s stock, Messier said, and added that Fourtou’s recent criticism of his deal-making and love of the limelight was necessary because Fourtou needs to “differentiate himself from me.”

In fact, Messier has little to gain from knocking current management because he still is heavily invested in the company.

He said he put about $20 million of his savings and borrowed $5 million more from the company to buy 500,000 shares in Vivendi before the stock tanked.

Messier denied speculation that he faces personal bankruptcy.

After his ouster, he and his family retreated to a ranch in Montana, where he went horseback riding and took up fly fishing for trout, and later vacationed at a home outside Paris. The theater buff also took in several Broadway shows, including the musical “Mamma Mia,” which he has seen three times.

Despite the pending move from the Vivendi-owned penthouse, Messier said his family will remain in New York, where four of his five children attend school and he and his wife, Antoinette, are active in organizations including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New York Philharmonic.

The usually loquacious executive declined to identify his partners or discuss details of his new venture, saying he wanted now to operate “under the radar,” in contrast to his previous flamboyant style that irked his former colleagues and board members at Vivendi.

Yet he still clings to part of his past. He said he plans to give up his seats on the boards of Vivendi’s utility and telecom subsidiaries, but he won’t say when.

He wouldn’t comment on whether he was still trying to negotiate a multimillion-dollar severance package, even though he criticized others for seeking golden parachutes.

He said he doesn’t miss the perks of being a CEO and is prepared to live a more modest life.

“Does it really matter?” he said. “People forget that I grew up in a middle-class family in Grenoble [in southeast France]. I wasn’t born into the life of a CEO.”