Chinese gold finds France

Nicolas Sarkozy's entourage has picked up quite a few business deals over the past few hours:

Areva won an 8 billion euro ($11.9 billion) agreement to build nuclear reactors, a record for the French company. Airbus was awarded a contract of about $17 billion for 160 planes, and Alcatel-Lucent SA, Alstom SA and Suez SA also sealed deals.

Sarkozy also publicly said that he opposes a planned referendum in Taiwan on whether the country should apply for UN membership as Taiwan (not China).