French President Francois Hollande will on Thursday seek to boost ties with Brazil at the start of a two-day state visit to Latin America's dominant economic power. France is the fifth biggest investor in Brazil, the world's seventh largest economy, where around 600 French companies have set up shop and bilateral trade totals $8.8 billion. Hollande's visit, with scheduled stops in Brasilia and Sao Paulo, the country's economic capital, comes exactly a year after his Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff visited Paris. France's nuclear energy giant Areva is meanwhile to ink a contract worth more than $1.37 billion to build a third reactor at Brazil's Angra nuclear power plant in Rio de Janeiro state.
