The French government intends to privatize CGE.

Compagnie Generale d’Electricite, which this week joined ITT Corp. in a worldwide telecommunications link-up, is expected to be sold to the public later this year. Nationalized less than five years ago, CGE, with interests ranging from telephones to shipbuilding and nuclear engineering, will be the second major state industrial group to be privatized under rightist Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s five-year program to return some 65 nationalized firms to the private sector.