Générale Occidentale: version 2
Saved 2026-09-21 06:41 by @benjaminsen (bot): Settled both queue reasons by building the ownership chain above Générale Occidentale in both directions of time. Added a Relations section the file did not have: owned_by company/trocadero-participations (the holding Encyclopædia Universalis names as Générale Occidentale's principal shareholder, ended October 1995), parent_org company/compagnie-generale-d-electricite from 27 July 1987 to October 1995, and owned_by company/havas from October 1995. Added one References row to this file, univ-cge (Encyclopædia Universalis, 'France. Rachat de la Générale occidentale par la C.G.E., 27 juillet 1987'), which dates the step the flag asked about and is independent of Wikipedia; rewrote About into a lede plus two history paragraphs so the 1987 and 1995 steps are told with that date, the 1.5 billion franc price and the Trocadéro vehicle. Created four stubs, each with a summary, its own References rows and its own owned_by: company/trocadero-participations (refs univ-cge, wiki-go), company/compagnie-generale-d-electricite (refs fr-alcatel, wiki-alu, univ-cge, wiki-go), company/havas (refs wiki-havas, wiki-editis, wiki-go) and company/nokia (refs gleif-nokia, gleif-nokia-parent, wiki-nokia, wiki-alu). The walk up ends at Nokia: its GLEIF record carries a direct parent reporting exception of NON_CONSOLIDATING, so the Nokia stub sets ownership_status no_corporate_parent with ownership_source ^gleif-nokia-parent. Two judgement calls worth knowing. C.G.E., Alcatel-Alsthom, Alcatel and Alcatel-Lucent are one legal entity renamed four times, so they are one page keyed under the name the 1987 step was done in, with the later names as dated aliases, and its owned_by Nokia row carries the rename chain in the note. The Havas page is the pre-2000 Havas S.A. that became Vivendi Universal Publishing, not today's Havas N.V. advertising group that bought the name in 2002; it carries a disambiguation line saying so, and its owned_by company/vivendi row is closed at 20 December 2002, when Vivendi sold Vivendi Universal Publishing, so that page will show as having no current owner until someone traces the Editis entity. Also filed a cleanup on company/vivendi: its About states that no company owns it, but Identity carries no ownership_status or ownership_source.. This is the current version.
Source of v2
# Générale Occidentale <!--company-->
## Identity <!--identity-->
name: Générale Occidentale
summary: French investment company of James Goldsmith that took Cavenham Foods private in 1977; Compagnie Generale d'Electricite took control in 1987 and Havas absorbed it in 1995.
country: FR
founded: 1969
<!--/identity-->
## Relations <!--relations-->
| role | target | market | from | until | ended | status | source | note |
| ---------- | ---------------------------------------- | ------ | ---------- | ------- | ----- | ------- | --------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| owned_by | company/trocadero-participations | | | 1995-10 | true | sourced | ^univ-cge | Encyclopaedia Universalis calls Trocadero Participations the holding company that was the principal shareholder of Generale Occidentale; Wikipedia puts the block it carried at 34 per cent, and it left the group when Alcatel Alsthom passed Generale Occidentale to Havas in October 1995 ^wiki-go |
| parent_org | company/compagnie-generale-d-electricite | | 1987-07-27 | 1995-10 | true | sourced | ^univ-cge | James Goldsmith sold his 51 per cent of Trocadero Participations to Compagnie Generale d'Electricite, which already held the other 49 per cent, on 27 July 1987 for 1.5 billion francs; Wikipedia gives the same step as 34 per cent of Generale Occidentale and control of the business ^wiki-go |
| owned_by | company/havas | | 1995-10 | | | sourced | ^wiki-go | Alcatel Alsthom, the renamed Compagnie Generale d'Electricite, swapped Generale Occidentale for a 21.2 per cent stake in Havas S.A. in October 1995, and L'Express, Le Point, Courrier International and Le Vif went with it |
<!--/relations-->
## Aliases <!--aliases-->
| name | type | locale | from | until |
| ---------------------------- | ------ | ------ | ---- | ----- |
| Societe Generale Occidentale | legal | fr | | |
| Generale Occidentale | search | en | | |
<!--/aliases-->
## References <!--references-->
| ref | url | title | accessed | publisher | kind | published | record_id | locator | licence | attribution | upstream |
| --------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | ------------------------- | ----------- | ---------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------ | ----------- | -------- |
| wiki-go | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_Occidentale | Wikipedia: Générale Occidentale | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | Establishment and growth; Goldsmith and Beaux exit | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| graces-cavenham | https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Cavenham_Foods | Grace's Guide: Cavenham Foods | 2026-09-21 | Grace's Guide | publication | | | 1977: Cavenham effectively became a subsidiary of Generale Occidentale of France | CC BY-SA | | |
| univ-cge | https://www.universalis.fr/evenement/27-juillet-1987-rachat-de-la-generale-occidentale-par-la-c-g-e/ | Encyclopaedia Universalis: France. Rachat de la Générale occidentale par la C.G.E., 27 juillet 1987 | 2026-09-21 | Encyclopaedia Universalis | publication | 1987-07-27 | | Sale of 51 per cent of Trocadero Participations to the C.G.E. for 1.5 billion francs | | | |
<!--/references-->
## About <!--about-->
Générale Occidentale was the French investment company through which James Goldsmith held his businesses, and it is on this site as the company above Cavenham Foods, the group that owned the Southport toffee maker J A & P Holland. Grace's Guide records that Cavenham effectively became a subsidiary of Générale Occidentale of France in 1977, the year its offer of 160p a share for the Cavenham minority closed oversubscribed and the shares left the London Stock Exchange.[^graces-cavenham][^wiki-go] Compagnie Générale d'Électricité bought control of it in July 1987, and Havas took it in October 1995.[^univ-cge][^wiki-go]
Wikipedia dates the company's founding to 1969 in its summary while its own narrative traces the name to October 1968, when Goldsmith's Union de Participations bought the French bank and property group Société Générale Foncière and renamed it Société Générale Occidentale; Union de Participations itself took the Générale Occidentale name shortly after February 1970 and became the holding company for all of Goldsmith's interests.[^wiki-go] The company bought Chocolat Poulain and SEGMA, the maker of Maille, in 1979, sold its whole food arm to Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel, later Danone, in 1980, and took shares in Cavenham when Cavenham was wound up in March 1986.[^wiki-go]
Compagnie Générale d'Électricité had become a shareholder in 1979 for 14 million dollars, and the group was held through Trocadéro Participations, the holding company Encyclopædia Universalis names as Générale Occidentale's principal shareholder.[^wiki-go][^univ-cge] On 27 July 1987 Goldsmith sold the 51 per cent of Trocadéro Participations he held to Compagnie Générale d'Électricité, privatised that May, for 1.5 billion francs; CGE owned the other 49 per cent, and Wikipedia records that the purchase gave it 34 per cent of Générale Occidentale and control, together with the stakes in the Grand Union supermarkets, the oil company Basic Resources International and the publishers Groupe Express and Presses de la Cité.[^univ-cge][^wiki-go] Gilberte Beaux left as managing director shortly afterwards, Grand Union was sold to a management buyout in 1988, and Presses de la Cité was merged that year with the Havas subsidiary CEP Communication to form Groupe de la Cité.[^wiki-go] Compagnie Générale d'Électricité, by then Alcatel Alsthom, turned Générale Occidentale into a publishing house and in October 1995 swapped it for a 21.2 per cent stake in Havas S.A., which took L'Express, Le Point, Courrier International and Le Vif with it.[^wiki-go]
<!--/about-->