A French court has found global cosmetics corporation L'Oreal guilty of racist hiring discrimination. In a job search in 2000, the makeup giant's Garnier division recruited salespeople for the Fructis Style haircare line and specified which skin colour and background they wanted in potential employees.

A hiring brief stated that employees should be white, of French descent and a clothing-size 8 to 12. For that, L'Oreal and the personnel hiring firm Adecco have been fined £25,500 and ordered to pay the same amount to SOS Racisme, an anti-racist group that brought the issue to court attention.

Sounds like a nice cheque, unless you consider that L'Oreal, as the world's largest beauty-products group, turned a profit of 1.4 billion euros in 2007.