17 JANUARY 1998, Page 25

Dassault course

HOW exciting the life of a financial jour- nalist must be, if you work in Paris. You are just thinking about lunch when a Mirage jet screams overhead, you dive beneath your desk, and the next thing you know is that you are under new ownership and pointing in the opposite direction. This has hap- pened to the startled staff of Le Journal des Finances and Valeurs Actuelles. The Mirage maker, Serge Dassault, has swooped down on these two financial weeklies and bought them, for, as he says: 'A group like Dassault should have a daily or weekly to express its opinion and perhaps also to respond to some journalists who have written about it in a not very pleasant manner.' Controver- sial financiers are sometimes tempted to buy newspapers or magazines, but few of them express their motives so candidly. I warn M. Dassault that if he enters City and Suburban's airspace I shall open fire.