So it was that Brussels yesterday gave its blessing to the French government’s bail-out of the engineering conglomerate Alstom, even though it involves an even bigger bung from the French taxpayer than was originally envisaged.The initial plan would have seen the French state paying €600m for a one-third stake in the manufacturer of the TGV and luxury cruise liners. It was all too much for the Competition Commissioner, Mario Monti, who pronounced a firm non and told the government, the banks and the company to go away and think up something that was less blatantly interventionist.The new deal involves the government stumping up €800m for a variety of esoteric bonds, a portion of which are convertible into shares some-time-never, but has nevertheless passed the Commission’s Good Housekeeping test of what constitutes acceptable state support.After the bail-out of France Telecom, there was a weary inevitability that the rescue of Alstom would somehow overcome the competition concerns of Brussels. Had this been Britain, it would have been left to the insolvency practitioners to see what capital could be rescued from the wreckage of Alstom, leaving employees to their fate. But since it is France, jobs have been saved instead.There is, however, a silver lining for the UK. Though you would not guess it from the name or the composition of the board, Alstom is part British – a product of Lord Weinstock’s merger of part of his GEC empire with Alcatel of France back in the 1980s. And although Alstom’s UK presence is much diminished, some of those French euros will be helping to preserve British jobs.The Commission’s approval of the Alstom deal should also make it hard for Brussels to object to the UK government’s rescue of the nuclear generator British Energy – a deal which involves the taxpayer shouldering all the company’s decommissioning liabilities.

However, in British Energy’s case there is at least the purpose of keeping the lights on and cleaning up the mess. No such justification exists with Alstom.Baltimore TechStrange but true. Baltimore Technologies, which yesterday reduced itself to a small cash shell by selling off its remaining business in internet security software for just £5m, was once worth nearly £7bn. For a brief few months, it was even a member of the FTSE 100. Yet its fame and fortune proved scarcely less transitory than that of Will what’s-his-name from Pop Idol. The moral of the story is never invest in something you cannot understand.At the height of the technology boom, investment wisdom of this sort counted for nothing.

Baltimore was in something to do with internet security, and that was enough. Eventually all business transactions would be performed online, it was widely assumed, so this had to be a growth business.Never mind that it was hard enough even to understand how Baltimore’s public key infrastructure technology worked, let alone how it might be sold and marketed, and who might profit from it. Nevermind too that whatever it was that Baltimore did was alive with competitors. It was something to do with the internet, it was quoted, and, er, it was the future, wasn’t it? Apparently not.Baltimore was the result of a merger between the business interests of a nerdy mathematics professor, Henry Beker, and a fast talking Irishman, Fran Rooney. It should have been a perfect match of opposites but in fact they never gelled.

About the only thing they could ever agree on was when to sell their shares, which, fortunately for them, they managed largely to offload when the price was still relatively buoyant So there’s the other lesson. Pay attention to the directors’ share dealings.jeremy.warner independent.co.uk. Shares in the explorer Tullow Oil took a pasting yesterday after it emerged that the group’s Gawain South East exploration well in the North Sea had turned out to be a dry hole. Tullow shares slumped 6.5p to 81p as the group’s management decided to plug and abandon the hole.