France, like many other European countries, has stated its concerns about the growing investment appetite of sovereign wealth funds from resource-rich emerging countries for European industrial and financial companies. But Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, seems to be behaving these days as the chairman of a sovereign wealth fund.

The French government on Wednesday acquired a 2.85 per cent stake in STMicroelectronics from Italy’s Finmeccanica to maintain the balance between French and Italian shareholders in the cross-border semiconductor venture.