Well now this is interesting. CP tells us Guite was "working for Vickers and Benson when he had dinner with Gagliano at Ottawa's Mama Teresa restaurant in March 2000. He was acting as a consultant to help facilitate Vickers' acquisition by France's Havas Group in a deal that hinged on Havas' demand that Vickers' lucrative government ad contracts remain stable following the acquisition." Alert reader Keith started googling, and found that Havas was at one time part-owned by -- who'd believe it? -- the Desmarais family, through their holdings in Groupe Bruxelles Lambert. Before everyone gets too excited: According to Power Corp's 1998 Annual Report (HTML version here), GBL dumped its shares in Havas in 1998. That's two years before Chuck and Fonzie's dinner. Eventually it seems to have been bought up by Vivendi. (OOPS: Turns out Power owns a piece of Vivendi, through BNP-Paribas. Indeed, Andre Desmarais sits on its board. I'm way out of my depth, here.) More on Havas's tangled corporate history here. And for those whose French is better than mine, here and here.