"He's Our Cowboy"

It is Friday evening, and television viewers all over France are rushing to finish up the dinner dishes. It is almost time for Ambition, a popular new program starring Financial Wizard Bernard Tapie, 44. Sporting a dark blue suit and his trademark red tie, the lively Parisian preaches hard work and street smarts as the roots of success. "Create companies and earn big money through entrepreneurship," he counsels his enthusiastic audience. "Dare to think big!"

Stirring theme music then blares, and on walks Fabienne Vernon, 18, one of the "junior entrepreneurs" chosen to receive advice from Tapie and a panel of experts. Fabienne wants to start a natural-fertilizer business using earthworms. "This idea can make money!" beams Tapie.

Bernard Tapie is a prototype of the new French entrepreneur, the personification of an emerging capitalist spirit that is popping up in unexpected places all around the world. With an enthusiastic push, he asks, "Why are we, who have invented everything from fashion to gastronomy, not the most powerful economic force in the world?" In addition to emceeing a television show, Tapie has peddled his views in a best-selling autobiography titled Winning and a popular record called Success in Life. Following the example of his hero, Lee Iacocca, Tapie appears in openly nationalistic television commercials for his own products.

Tapie is well qualified to discuss the merits of the new French dream. Creator and manager of the holding company Groupe Tapie, which had profits of $45 million on sales of roughly $1 billion in 1985, Tapie was the son of a pipe fitter in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve. As a teenager he helped support his family by hauling burlap sacks of coal. Tapie first went into management consulting, but soon began starting new companies. His first few ventures failed disastrously, but in the late '70s he suddenly discovered his forte: rejuvenating bankrupt businesses. Thanks to his talent for turnarounds, Groupe Tapie, which turns out bicycle parts, designer clothing and dozens of other products, now operates 116 factories in 28 countries.

In the French press Tapie is referred to as the "proletarian millionaire" because of his relaxed style. "He runs a horizontal management," explains Camille Letierce, director general of the company's sports division. "In France, the chief executive officer has often been a stuffy and stiff individual hidden away from real contact with his workers. But Bernard is out in front of his troops, openly announcing that he wants to make money. He's very American. He's our cowboy. He's our Ronald Reagan." Tapie has been called "Zorro" and "the miracle man," but he reacts contemptuously to such titles. "I am no superman," he says. "I am just a professional who knows how to do his job."

Tapie enjoys the fruits of his success. He whizzes around France in a dark blue Mercedes or his personal twin-engine Falcon jet, and lives in Paris in a stylish Avenue Foch apartment with his wife and three children. Between takeovers, he cheers for the soccer team he owns, the popular Olympique of Marseilles. His plans for next fall include sponsoring an entrepreneurship camp for unemployed youth. "The rewards of business are not simply money," grins this cheerleader of capitalism. "It is the pleasure, the game, liberty, mobility, the possibility of creating. I believe in dreams, risk and laughter."