For a short while now, a quiet revolution has been beneath approach in France Inc.: Overseas-born CEOs are operating a number of the nation’s most-strategic corporations, one thing that may have been unthinkable only a few many years in the past.
With a few of them succeeding within the briefs they’ve been given, the pattern could also be right here to remain.
The flag bearer Air France-KLM, the image of the nation’s manufacturing business Renault SA, the nation’s greatest prescription drugs firm Sanofi and its troubled tech champion Atos SE that serves the important nuclear and protection industries are all being helmed by executives who usually are not French. Though commonplace within the UK or the US, the phenomenon marks a sea change within the company panorama in France, the place jobs at key corporations used to go not simply to French executives, however those who had attended sure elite colleges — just like the École Nationale d’Administration or Polytechique.
“The world has turn into much more versatile and really world, and CEO hires mirror this,” says Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Ostrum Asset Administration. “The older technology didn’t have such an open tradition.”
The hirings have additionally coincided with the rising internationalization of France’s largest corporations, with many getting greater than 70% of their income exterior France. Overseas CEOs nonetheless make up solely 18% of high French companies — beneath the worldwide common of 25%, in response to knowledge from government recruiter Heidrick & Struggles, but it surely exhibits how government expertise is more and more trumping a historic tendency towards elitism. The strikes have additionally come on the watch of President Emmanuel Macron, himself a former funding banker who was first elected in 2017 and whose pro-business stance helped him win white-collar votes. Macron has pushed to re-industrialize France, looking for to draw extra tech corporations to rival the hubs of London, Frankfurt and Berlin, and likewise to woo various worldwide expertise.
One of many pioneers of the pattern is the Canadian-born Ben Smith, 52, who was introduced in to go Air France-KLM at a important juncture for the service on the finish of 2018. The French a part of the Franco-Dutch airline was being torn aside by labor troubles and paralyzed by strikes — made well-known by {a photograph} in 2015 of firm executives fleeing over a fence with their shirts ripped off by protesters. Utilizing a non-confrontational demeanor and specializing in the airline’s French heritage, Smith has been in a position to efficiently rework the previous problem-child, Air France, with the group reporting a report revenue final 12 months.
Nonetheless, his nationality was a difficulty when he was being thought-about, Air France-KLM Chairwoman Anne-Marie Couderc stated in an interview.
“It was one of many questions the federal government had, the truth that he wasn’t French,” she stated. “However after assembly him, after analyzing his profile, after listening to him, the federal government and all our shareholders backed our alternative. It’s true that it was essential for him to enhance his French as quickly as he arrived.”
Smith relied on a detailed working relationship with Couderc, a former minister, to assist him navigate the intricacies of the French authorities, which owns a 28% stake. For labor relations, he leaned on Air France CEO Anne Rigail, who’s French and says she spends “between 30% and 50%” of her time speaking with labor unions and different staff – usually alongside Smith – to ensure the technique is known. The consequence: throughout weeks of nationwide strikes in 2023 to protest the federal government’s pension reforms, Air France had none.
The same transformation is beneath approach at Renault, which is 15%-owned by the federal government. The carmaker, headed by 56-year-old Italian born CEO Luca de Meo since July 2020, is hiring in Franceagain and betting it may possibly profitably construct a minimum of some reasonably priced electrical autos at dwelling. De Meo took the reins at Renault when it was dropping hundreds of thousands of euros a day; it’s now again within the black, is paying a dividend and has a market worth surpassing that of accomplice Nissan Motor Co. for the primary time in years.
The chief, who has greater than 30 years of expertise within the automotive sector and was essential within the profitable revamp of the Fiat 500, is now investing closely to advertise his made-in-France push – with the brand new Renault 5 even that includes French flags on its entrance lights with glass provided by one other French powerhouse, Cie. de Saint Gobain.
He renamed Renault’s System 1 staff Alpine to revive the group’s sports-car model, and picked two French F1 drivers for it. Renault simply inaugurated a brand new idea retailer dubbed ‘rnlt’ on the central Boulevard Haussmann, a stone’s throw away from the French capital’s busy vacationer space across the Opera Garnier. On April 23, the corporate will host a ‘What the 5 Present’ in entrance of one other landmark constructing of the French capital, the Centre Pompidou, to have a good time the brand new all-electric and made-in-France Renault 5. On the similar time, De Meo is also refurbishing a Renault retailer on the Champs Elysees as different manufacturers pull out from the famend Paris avenue.
“You may’t get rather more French than this,” de Meo stated throughout an interview final 12 months.
Serving to de Meo – who had by no means run a listed firm earlier than taking the highest job at Renault – is Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard, a mentor and ally within the troublesome activity of turning round a loss-making firm that was traumatized by the drama surrounding the shock imprisonment in Japan of former CEO Carlos Ghosn. When Ghosn had taken over the helm at Renault in 2005, his not being French had been seen as a handicap for the Lebanese-Brazilian government.
“Once I needed Ghosn to succeed me, I suggested him to get French citizenship,” says former Renault Chairman and CEO Louis Schweitzer. “Renault is a really symbolic firm for France; I assumed it might make him a stronger CEO.”
Extra trendy governance practices, with a cut up of the chairman and CEO roles, in all probability makes it simpler to rent non-French CEOs and days when English was a language barrier for a board and for French executives are also gone, Schweitzer stated.
The truth is, not being French might even have helped each Smith at Air France-KLM and de Meo at Renault. Each CEOs discovered fraught relations with their respective firm’s overseas companions upon arrival, and being non-French and impartial might have made talks simpler. De Meo has managed to disentangle complicated relations with Japan’s Nissan, whereas Smith helped appease employees at Dutch service KLM, which is a part of the French-Dutch group, wherein each governments personal a stake.
“Ben is delicate to totally different cultures,” stated Couderc. “He has respect not just for individuals but in addition for the group’s totally different manufacturers and for the group’s cultures.”
De Meo was awarded France’s highest ornament, the Legion d’Honneur, final 12 months; Smith is slated to get his on April 23.
Overseas CEOs – or CEOs with duel citizenships — are on the helm of a number of different notable French corporates: the 57-year-old German nationwide Peter Herweck runs industrial big Schneider Electrical SE and Paul Hudson, 56, is the CEO of French drugmaker Sanofi. Within the strategic banking business, French-Polish government Slawomir Krupa beat out a French rival for the highest job of Societe Generale SA in 2022. Stellantis NV’s Peugeot model is run by a British government, Linda Jackson.
In the meantime, the embattled French IT firm Atos, which this month bought interim funding from the French authorities to remain afloat because it struggles with virtually €5 billion of debt, is now headed by US citizen Paul Saleh. The agency provides IT companies to the nuclear and protection sectors, and handles Olympics cybersecurity.
To make certain, there are very vital, extremely world sectors in France the place French executives nonetheless have a stranglehold on the highest jobs — particularly when they’re household managed — like the posh business. The sector powers the nation’s benchmark CAC 40 Index with a number of the world’s greatest corporations by market worth, and their CEOs stay resolutely French: the billionaire Bernard Arnault is the chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton proprietor LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Europe’s greatest firm by market worth. The bosses of Gucci proprietor Kering SA and Hermes Worldwide are also French.
However more and more, as French corporations search an even bigger piece of the worldwide markets wherein they function, outdated nationalist taboos are melting away, stated Air France-KLM’s Couderc.
“Many corporations might be French, and based mostly in France, however with world companies,” she stated. “Many corporations need to develop exterior their borders, which implies that being French isn’t a should.”
