Ruckus Wireless prices IPO at high end of range: market source

(Reuters) – WiFi products maker Ruckus Wireless Inc priced its initial public offering at $ 15 per share, the high end of its expected price range, a market source told Reuters.

The company, which is backed by Google Inc‘s Motorola Mobility LLC and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, raised $ 126 million by selling 8.4 million shares.

Ruckus offered 7 million shares while selling shareholders, including Telus Corp, offered 1.4 million shares.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company, which makes wireless LAN products for both indoor and outdoor use, competes with Meru Networks Inc and Aruba Networks Inc.

The company’s customers include Time Warner Cable Inc, Towerstream Corp, Tikona Digital Networks and Bright House Networks.

Goldman Sachs & Co and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters to the offering.

The company’s shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday under the ticker symbol “RKUS”.

(This story was fixed to correct description of Sequoia Capital to venture capital firm in paragraph 2)

(Reporting by Sharanya Hrishikesh and Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

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Why David Geffen is getting the “American Masters” treatment

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – David Geffen is not a singer. Nor is he a movie star. Nor is he a writer.

Thus he would seem an odd subject for “American Masters,” a series devoted to artists ranging from Willa Cather to Woody Allen.

Yet series creator Susan Lacy claims that the mogul has had a profound impact on American popular culture that equals any of those figures. She pleads her case in “Inventing David Geffen,” which will be broadcast November 20 on PBS. The documentary had its premiere in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.

“He seems like a bit of an odd choice,” Lacy admitted to TheWrap. “But I have a degree in American Studies and I learned that the people with the most influence are often the ones behind the scenes.”

In Geffen, Lacy saw a figure like Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer whose lasting legacy was a series of modernist shows he held at his New York galleries that influenced visual arts in this country and brought cubism to the masses.

Some arm twisting must have been required to get the press-averse Geffen to emerge from semi-retirement to reflect on his career in movies, music and Broadway. Lacy said that part of the reason she was able to convince him to participate is that he was a fan of the series and had participated in her documentaries on figures such as Joni Mitchell.

“It wasn’t hard,” she said. “I knew from other people that he thinks my Leonard Bernstein documentary is one of the best documentaries anyone ever made. Mike Nichols told me that he makes everybody who stays with him watch it.”

In addition to Geffen, the documentary features interviews with his friends and colleagues — an A-list rolodex that includes Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Elton John, Neil Young, Clive Davis, Barry Diller, and Irving Azoff. His sphere was huge, Lacy claims because his influence was tectonic.

By championing musicians such as Jackson Browne and Laura Nyro, Geffen put his own imprint on the emerging singer-songwriter movement in the 1970s. Later, Geffen managed to adapt to shifting tastes, by aligning himself with groups like Aerosmith and Guns ‘N Roses and helping to usher in the heavy metal craze. For more than 30 years, his labels – Asylum Records, Geffen Records, and DGC Records – represented the high-water mark for musicians, who clamored to get in the door.

“He had an incredible eye for talent,” Lacy said. “These people would have eventually found their way. But he helped them get there. He fixed their teeth and allowed them to write music that’s history.”

Though he made his name in music, Geffen also became a force in the theater and film businesses.

He enriched himself by producing hit musicals like “Cats” and “Dreamgirls,” and branched out into movies with memorable pictures like “Risky Business.” In 1994, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG, the studio behind Oscar-winners like “American Beauty” and “Saving Private Ryan.”

“In each decade, he has done something that has affected the culture,” Lacy said. “If I had to boil it down to one thing it would be his genius at business.”

It’s a mastery of deal-making and talent-scouting that has made him a very wealthy man, worth an estimated $ 5.5 billion. It is also a trajectory that Lacy maintains cannot be replicated in a more fractured media landscape, where mega-corporations wield disproportionate influence and are more interested in quarterly earnings than fostering rising stars.

“Even he would say that nobody could do what he did today,” Lacy said. “The times have changed so much. I asked him if he could raise $ 2 billion to start a new studio, and he said ‘absolutely not.’ And record companies, well, we know what happened to them. Behind all the conglomerates and corporations, to find someone with a genuine sensibility like David Geffen‘s would be impossible. He was unique.”

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Tired after cancer treatment? Walking may help

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who have been treated for cancer often have lingering fatigue, but a new analysis of more than three dozen studies suggests regular walking or cycling might help boost their energy.

Patients’ long-lasting tiredness has been blamed both on the cancer itself, including cancer-related pain, and on the effects of treatments such as chemotherapy.

Prior studies point to talk therapy, nutrition counseling and acupuncture as possible ways to ease cancer-related fatigue during or after treatment (see Reuters Health story of October 29, 2012).

But light-to-moderate exercise has the advantage of being something people can do on their own time, for little or no cost.

“We’re not expecting people to go out and be running a mile the next day,” said Fiona Cramp, who worked on the analysis at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

“Some people will be well enough that they’re able to go for a jog or go for a bike ride, and if they can, that’s great. But we would encourage people to start with a low level of activity,” she told Reuters Health – such as a 20-minute walk a couple of times each day.

Cramp and her colleague James Byron-Daniel pooled findings from 38 studies that directly compared more than 2,600 people with cancer-related fatigue who did or didn’t go through an exercise program.

The majority of that research looked at women with breast cancer. The type of exercise program varied, from walking or biking to weight training or yoga. More than half of the studies included multiple exercises or allowed participants to choose their own type of physical activity.

The amount of prescribed exercise ranged from two times per week to daily workouts, lasting anywhere from ten minutes to two hours, depending on the study.

When they combined the results, the researchers found physical activity both during and after cancer treatment was tied to improved energy. In particular, aerobic exercise such as walking and cycling tended to reduce fatigue more than resistance training, they reported this week in the journal The Cochrane Library.

“What we do know is there will be an appreciable difference; the average patient will get a benefit from physical activity,” Cramp said. “The actual amount of reduction in fatigue is going to vary according to the individual.”

For example, the team saw exercise-related benefits for people with breast cancer and prostate cancer, although not for those with the blood and bone marrow cancers leukemia and lymphoma.

“Some of the hematologic patients may not have the reserves to always tolerate the aerobic exercise,” said Carol Enderlin, who has studied fatigue and cancer at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.

“They do not always have the oxygen carrying capacity, for instance,” because the disease and treatment affect blood cell counts. For those people, non-aerobic exercise or exercise at a lower dose may be a better option, said Enderlin, who wasn’t part of the research team.

Regular moderate exercise is one non-drug therapy recommended by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Although it might seem intuitive to deal with fatigue by getting lots of rest and avoiding extra activity, that could lead to more loss of muscle mass and fitness, according to Cramp and Byron-Daniel.

One cancer specialist not involved in the new study said that along with reducing fatigue, a combination of moderate exercise and nutrition therapy may help women with breast cancer in particular lower their risk of recurrence. Women being treated for breast cancer tend to gain weight, said Dr. Roanne Segal, from the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada.

“We are now pushing… lifestyle programs which incorporate diet and exercise to get you to either maintain your weight or reduce your weight,” she told Reuters Health.

But the most appropriate exercise program, Segal added, will depend on where patients are with their treatment and the details of their particular cancer.

Cramp emphasized that people will have different goals and abilities when it comes to exercise, and that they should discuss those with their doctor. And although most patients will be able to do some kind of physical activity, fragile bones and anemia might hold others back.

“Cancer patients should of course first talk with their doctor to see if it’s safe to exercise,” Enderlin told Reuters Health. “If it’s felt they are safe to exercise, they should maintain a level of at least comfortable activity in order to keep up their endurance, to keep up their strength (and) to promote function.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TMV6SC The Cochrane Library, online November 14, 2012.

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Asian stocks mixed on Europe, US woes; Japan gains

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stock markets were mixed Friday after data showed Europe slipped back into recession and several big U.S. retailers disappointed investors with weak forecasts.

The European Union‘s statistics agency said Thursday that the combined economy of the 17 countries that use the euro contracted 0.1 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter. Surveys pointing to difficult conditions ahead suggest the recession could deepen.

“Although unsurprising, data in Europe confirmed that the region fell back into recession, an outcome that will do little to ease tensions,” analysts at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said in an email commentary.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.3 percent to 21,171.28. South Korea‘s Kospi fell 0.5 percent to 1,860.92. Australia‘s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.2 percent to 4,339.40. Benchmarks in Taiwan, New Zealand and mainland China fell. Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines rose.

Japan‘s Nikkei 225 stock index jumped 1.8 percent to 8,990.80, rallying for a second straight day on expectations that the opposition Liberal Democratic Party may win elections next month and pursue more aggressive stimulus policies than the current leadership.

LDP leader Shinzo Abe has said he is determined to push for such policies and to find ways to weaken the yen, whose strength against other currencies has hammered exporters.

Stan Shamu, strategist at IG Markets in Melbourne, said Abe wants an inflation target of between 2 and 3 percent as a way to cheapen the Japanese currency, perhaps by printing yen or bulking up on purchases of assets like Japanese government bonds. Still, the target might be difficult to achieve, given the economy’s weakness, he said.

“With such a big export economy, the yen has massive significance on how the local economy performs,” Shamu said.

Japan’s exporters, whose fortunes are linked to the yen’s valuation, were buoyed by the prospect of a changing of the guard. Mazda Motor Corp. soared 8.9 percent. Nissan Motor Co. jumped 5.8 percent. Nikon Corp. surged 6.9 percent and Canon Inc. gained 5 percent.

In Australia, Whitehaven Coal fell 1.4 percent after announcing it would scale back some operations due to the decline in global coal prices.

In the U.S., investors were dealt dual blows: worse-than-expected revenue from global retailing giant Wal-Mart and data showing that manufacturing weakened in the Philadelphia and New York regions, reflecting damage from Superstorm Sandy.

Wal-Mart, Ross Stores and Limited Brands, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, also disappointed investors by issuing profit forecasts that fell short of expectations.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 0.2 percent to 12,542.38. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 0.2 percent to 1,353.33. The Nasdaq composite index lost 0.4 percent to 2,836.94.

Benchmark oil for December delivery was up 10 cents to $ 85.55 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 87 cents to close at $ 85.45 a barrel in New York on Thursday.

In currencies, the dollar weakened to 81.09 yen from 81.21 yen late Thursday in New York. The euro fell to $ 1.2769 from $ 1.2773.

___

Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

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Egypt recalls envoy to Israel after Gaza strike

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Israel after an Israeli airstrike killed the military commander of Gaza‘s ruling Hamas.

In a statement read on state TV late Wednesday, spokesman Yasser Ali said that President Mohammed Morsi recalled the ambassador and asked the Arab League‘s Secretary General to convene an emergency ministerial meeting in the wake of the Gaza violence.

Morsi also called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas, an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Israel says it struck in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

Hours earlier, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group denounced the Israeli airstrike as a “crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres.”

Relations between Israel and Egypt have deteriorated since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.

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Egypt recalls envoy to Israel after Gaza strike

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Israel after an Israeli airstrike killed the military commander of Gaza‘s ruling Hamas.

In a statement read on state TV late Wednesday, spokesman Yasser Ali said that President Mohammed Morsi recalled the ambassador and asked the Arab League‘s Secretary General to convene an emergency ministerial meeting in the wake of the Gaza violence.

Morsi also called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas, an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Israel says it struck in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

Hours earlier, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group denounced the Israeli airstrike as a “crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres.”

Relations between Israel and Egypt have deteriorated since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.

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RIM CEO sees new BlackBerry powering growth

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) – A new line of BlackBerry 10 devices will provide Research In Motion with a framework for growth over the next decade, offering long-term value for unhappy shareholders, Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said on Wednesday.

In an interview with Reuters, Heins said RIM had identified $ 800 million of the $ 1 billion of savings it promised for the financial year ending in early March, and was confident of finding the rest as it gets ready to launch the new phones.

RIM is betting that the new smartphones will help it claw back the market share it has lost to the likes of Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Both consumers and corporate customers have abandoned the BlackBerry in droves, even though the devices offer security features that rivals have been unable to match.

“There’s this high-level security that you cannot walk away from, and then there’s ‘good enough’ security,” Heins said in an interview at RIM’s Waterloo, Ontario, campus, a sprawl of low-rise buildings.

But analysts remain skeptical, especially after the botched 2011 launch of RIM’s PlayBook tablet computer, which the company had hoped would compete with Apple’s wildly popular iPad. The PlayBook had top-of-the-line hardware, but its software was far from complete at the launch and needed multiple updates.

RIM delayed the roll-out of the BlackBerry 10 phones to the first quarter of 2013 so as not to repeat the errors that surrounded the PlayBook launch.

Heins said the delay was the correct decision – the way to ensure the BB10 phones are a high-quality product rather than a rushed one that would not meet customer expectations.

“I think it’s all lining up. Sometimes you get the feeling that the universe is in disarray, and with BlackBerry 10 coming, I see the stars lining up,” Heins said.

SLEEK DEMO MODELS

Sleek demo models of the new phones look much like the high-end smartphones in the market today, and company executives proudly showed off a touch-screen version and a version with the miniature QWERTY keyboard popular with many BlackBerry users.

Users flick a thumb or finger to maneuver from one program to another and can sneak a look at an incoming email while browsing the Internet or using other applications, a multi-tasking ability that RIM says rival devices lack.

Personal and business profiles can be kept separately, something RIM calls BlackBerry Balance. Corporations can erase only their share of the data on a device if they need to do so for security reasons, leaving personal photos, contacts and emails untouched.

The app library available at launch will not match the vast number available on other devices. Heins said RIM had chosen to focus on providing those apps needed in different regional markets. It expects some 100,000 apps to be ready at launch.

The developer community has been broadly enthusiastic about the devices. But financial analysts have mixed views on their likely reception in an ultra-competitive market.

Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette warned last week that BlackBerry 10 is likely to be dead on arrival – with an operating system that gets “a lukewarm response at best,” due to the unfamiliar user interface and a shortage of apps.

SHAREHOLDER VALUE

Heins insisted morale was high at the company, despite 5,000 job cuts and a rapidly sliding market share ahead of the launch of the new phones.

RIM’s share price is down more than 90 percent from a 2008 peak of about $ 148. It has fallen even after Heins, a former Siemens AG executive, took over in January. The shares on Wednesday closed at $ 8.49 on Nasdaq.

“The message to our shareholders is that we understand this is and has been a difficult time for them and for us,” the tall, bespectacled CEO said. “But with the development of the BlackBerry 10 platform we are truly convinced that we will create long-term value for RIM’s shareholders and investors.”

RIM has already given the demo phones to developers and to carriers, and its new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which runs the devices on corporate networks, is in beta testing with 20 key customers — both government agencies and corporates.

Next month, the company will give more than 50 top enterprise customers technical previews of both BES 10 and the devices.

Heins said the feedback he is getting from the customer base “is very encouraging.”

With the erosion of RIM’s base particularly strong in North America, there has been speculation the company could choose to launch the new phones in a region where the phones remain popular. Heins said that would not be the case.

“We cannot launch every carrier and every country on the same day, but what we have defined is a set of waves in the various regions,” he said. “It is going to be a global launch. There isn’t one preferred region. We are managing and planning it as we speak.”

(Reporting by Euan Rocha and Janet Guttsman; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)

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Judge throws out Justin Bieber paparazzo chase case

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Criminal charges filed against a photographer who pursued teen pop star Justin Bieber at high speeds on a Los Angeles freeway in July were thrown out on Wednesday, striking a blow to California’s crackdown on overly aggressive paparazzi.

Celebrity photographer Paul Raef was the first person to be prosecuted under the state’s 2010 law that criminalizes dangerous driving when taking photos commercially.

Raef was charged in July with two counts of violating the law stemming from a July 6 incident on a freeway in Los Angeles‘ San Fernando Valley.

Dismissing the charges, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas Robinson called the state’s anti-paparazzi law “problematic” and “overly inclusive.”

The law “sweeps very widely and would increase the penalties for reckless driving” in unintended cases, Robinson said.

Robinson faulted the law’s vague definition of commercial photography, saying that it could also apply to a photographer who was speeding to reach an arranged photo shoot with Bieber.

Raef could have faced up to a year in prison and $ 3,500 in fines, if convicted. His attorney, Brad Kaiserman, said the law is “about protecting celebrities.”

A message left with Bieber’s publicist requesting comment was not immediately returned.

Raef still faces lesser charges of misdemeanor reckless driving and failing to obey police orders after he allegedly pursued Bieber, 18, at high speeds. He will be tried on those charges at a later date.

Bieber, who was pulled over by police for driving 80 miles per hour in a 65 mph zone, told officers at the time that he was being hounded by paparazzi, and police said they noticed Raef’s car following the “Boyfriend” singer.

About 30 minutes after the traffic stop, Bieber called police to report that Raef continued to follow him. Police later found Raef and other paparazzi together in downtown Los Angeles.

The Canadian singer received a speeding ticket at the time.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Sandra Maler)

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Public Health Service Aids Hurricane Sandy Relief

The U.S. Public Health Service has begun its third week assisting with Hurricane Sandy relief in New York City. Rapid Deployment Force 1 (RDF-1) assumed command of the medical special needs shelter at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center late yesterday afternoon from RDF-2. RDF-2 arrived in New York City on Oct. 31 and immediately set up a medical shelter at York College in Queens. Within two days they were moved to Brookdale Hospital to establish a new shelter.

Captain Dan Beck, director of the USPHS Commissioned Corps Readiness and Response Program, discussed the Public Health Service’s response to Hurricane Sandy in a telephone interview yesterday afternoon. The Public Health Service is currently operating two medical special needs shelters, one in Edison, N.J., and the one at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn. The shelters are for storm evacuees with medical needs that cannot be met at a standard shelter. The Brookdale shelter has about 100 evacuees from nursing homes that were in the path of the hurricane.

The U.S. Public Health Service has five Rapid Deployment Forces, Beck said. RDF-3 is at the New Jersey shelter. RDF-2 has just completed its two week deployment in Brooklyn and its role has been assumed by RDF-1. Both shelters have received assistance from other USPHS teams , such as mental health teams and services access teams. Of the 41 total teams in the response program, including the five RDF teams, 14 (three RDFs) have had some or all of their members deployed to this emergency.

Captain Beck noted that the hurricane has required the deployment of a significant portion of the Public Health Service’s RDF personnel and assets. RDF-4 and RDF-5 are being held in reserve, in the event of another disaster. If New York or New Jersey need the USPHS to continue to operate either shelter, “tiger teams” of qualified PHS officers currently on other assignments will be used.

The shelter at Brookdale has had a fairly steady patient population of around 100 since it opened, according to Beck. The majority of the patients are from skilled nursing homes and cannot be discharged to a regular shelter. Some of the LPNs and nursing aides from the homes that were evacuated accompanied their patients and are working alongside the Public Health staff in the shelter, which comprises the sixth and 11th floors of the hospital.

The U.S. Public Health Service has deployed rapid deployment force teams for many recent hurricanes. RDF-3 was stationed in Connecticut after Hurricane Irene. RDF’s also were used with Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Katrina. The role of an RDF in a disaster response, as Captain Beck described it, is to set up and operate a medical special needs shelter, using the cache of supplies from a Federal Medical Station. Patients in such shelters can be nursing home patients, or evacuees who have medical needs such as diabetics or those on home oxygen.

The U.S. Public Health Service is one of seven uniformed services in the United States government. Those consist of the four branches of the military, the Coast Guard, the uniformed members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Public Health Service. The 6,500 members of the commissioned corps of the USPHS are all officers, and the corps uses the ranks of the U.S. Navy. The corps consists of medical professionals in fifteen different areas, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists and dentists. Their normal assignments include work in the Bureau of Prisons, the Indian Health Service, the National Institutes of Health and other venues where the medical needs of disadvantaged citizens can be met.

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French CEOs: ‘Help!’

When some German politicians called on French President François Hollande recently to step up the pace of economic reform in France, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble sprang to Hollande’s defense in Berlin, saying it was wrong to call Europe’s second-largest economy the “sick man” of the region.

The heads of France’s biggest companies do not agree. Over the past few weeks, an extraordinary cry of alarm has risen from chief executives who warn that the French economy has gone dangerously off track. In an interview to be published on Nov. 15 in the magazine l’Express, Chief Executive Officer Henri de Castries of financial-services group Axa (CS:FP) warns that France is rapidly losing ground, not only against Germany but against nearly all its European neighbors. “There’s a strong risk that in 2013 and 2014, we will fall behind economies such as Spain, Italy, and Britain,” de Castries says.

On Nov. 5, veteran corporate chieftain Louis Gallois released a government-commissioned report calling for “shock treatment” to restore French competitiveness. And on Oct. 28, a group of 98 CEOs published an open letter to Hollande that said public-sector spending, which at 56 percent of gross domestic product is the highest in Europe, “is no longer supportable.” The letter was signed by the CEOs of virtually every major French company. (The few exceptions included utility Electricité de France, which is government controlled.)

The outcry is unusual for France Inc., which has tended to lobby behind the scenes and avoid public criticism of the government. That’s perhaps not surprising, since many CEOs attended the same schools as the country’s top politicians and often worked in government before going into business. De Castries was a classmate of Hollande’s at the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration; Serge Weinberg, chairman of pharmaceutical giant Sanofi (SAN:FP) and a signatory of the Oct. 28 letter, used to work for Socialist Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

The problems they’re complaining about aren’t new. Heavy taxes and social charges required to support high government spending have eroded corporate profitability. In the l’Express interview, de Castries says that on average, the government charges incurred by his company for each employee are more than double the employee’s take-home pay. French labor costs are the second-highest in Europe, after Belgium, as companies are burdened with rigid and devilishly complicated work rules. No surprise, then, that operating margins at French companies have shrunk almost 40 percent over the past decade, while those of companies in Germany—where painful labor-market reforms were carried out—have risen about 40 percent.

With Europe mired in economic crisis, the French citizenry is now reaping the bitter results. Companies are shedding workers, pushing unemployment to a 13-year high of more than 10 percent, almost twice Germany’s rate. After three quarters of flat growth, the economy looks to be tipping into recession.

At the same time, the crisis has pushed other European governments—Italy’s, for example—to carry out long-overdue reforms. As Gallois put it in his report, France has become “unhooked” from the broader economic realities. Gallois listed 22 recommendations, including a €30 billion ($ 38 billion) reduction in payroll taxes, loosening of labor laws, and the lifting of a ban on shale-gas exploration.

Hollande’s government didn’t respond to most of the recommendations but said it would enact temporary tax credits for business totaling €20 billion over three years. Corporate bosses are not impressed. A temporary credit will not “structurally diminish the cost of labor” or reduce administrative burdens on business, Michel Landel, CEO of food-service group Sodexo (SW:FP), said in a Nov. 10 radio interview.

Businesses also fret that the process of applying for tax credits will add to already burdensome paperwork. “The first thing they do is to complicate the mechanism for lowering the social charges,” de Castries laments in the l’Express interview.

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