Jean-Marie Messier, also known as "Jean-Marie Messier Moi-Même" (J-M.M. Myself) and "Jean Marie-Messier Moi-Même Maître du Monde" (J-M.M. Myself Master of the World, or J6M), is one of the media moguls of France. He was groomed to be one of France's leaders, and went to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. He was in 1986 an advisoer of Edouard Balladur, who would become Prime Minister in 1993; that would lead to his becoming CEO of La Générale des Eaux, a French company providing water and other services to French municipalities. He quickly renamed it Vivendi, which went on to buy all kind of media, from the tv channel Canal Plus, to the music-and-movie major Universal, to make the Vivendi Universal Company.
However at the beginning of 2002 the Vivendi Universal stock began to fall rapidly, as the investors thought that the company had grown too big, too fast. He attempted to keep his position, firing a good part of the directors, including to founder of Canal + Pierre Lescure, which made him one of France's hated man - historically Canal Plus funds most of French cinema and there was fears Messier would suppress this system. However, hated by the American stock-holders, especially the Bronfman family, he lost his position in June as the French majority of administrators stopped supporting him. He may now be charged with cooking the books while trying not to be fired.
He was one of the theorists of the merging of content and providers in the light of the Internet, the same theory behind the AOL-Time Warner merger. And he fell in the same swoop that took other CEO's developping this kind of company in Europe, like Thomas Middelhoff of Bertelsmann.