Earlier this autumn, the veteran telecom boss resisted calls for his resignation. His new number two, Stephane Richard, due to take full control of the group when Mr Lombard steps down in 2011, was put in charge of domestic operations with the mission of sorting out the company's acute internal social difficulties. But all these pressures and uncomfortable distractions do not seem to have prevented Mr Lombard from keeping at least one eye firmly on the competitive challenge of maintaining France Telecom's position in the leading pack of European operators.

In September, the French group's Orange subsidiary pipped Vodafone and Telefónica to the post by scooping Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile UK subsidiary into a joint venture that will put Orange in the driving seat in the key UK mobile market. That deal was widely seen as the latest step in the long-overdue consolidation of the European market.

Having failed last year to kick-start that process with a traditional cheque-book M&A approach to Sweden's TeliaSonera, France Telecom and its advisers, Perella Weinberg, have since engaged in some clever lateral thinking and have come up with the joint venture structure.