The head of France's employers' federation insisted yesterday that companies were making efforts to integrate employees from ethnic minorities into workforces, amid claims that jobseekers from troubled housing estates were being shunned. Laurence Parisot, chair of the Medef employers' body, said that French business was already "extremely involved" in attempts to integrate people from poor urban areas with disproportionately large immigrant communities, such as those hit by the recent rioting...In an article written for Les Echos newspaper, Claude Bébéar, chairman of Axa, the financial group, said the private sector had limited power to solve the problems that caused the riots. "One cannot ask companies to resolve in several months a problem that the state, in 20 years, has not known how to sort out and which, by its lack of foresight, [it] has allowed to worsen," he said.