Industrial, health, energy, food… Not a week goes by without Emmanuel Macron declining the concept of sovereignty, hammering home the absolute necessity for France to establish – or regain, it depends – control of its productive device. Commendable but belated conversion of a president who has long been a follower of “laisser-faire”, regretted Arnaud Montebourg, former Minister of the Economy, in a recent interview with L’Express. The Covid crisis, the war in Ukraine and the inflationary surge have obviously been there, exposing the country’s dependencies on vital issues: protecting its population from a tough virus, treating it, feeding it when prices soar or heat it in the winter.
Should this national reconquest, which drives the political debate, also guide the conduct of the affairs of our large companies? And can we measure it in their annual reports? For the third consecutive year, the economic intelligence firm Vélite has carried out an exercise as original as it is instructive: assessing the contribution of CAC 40 companies to French sovereignty. The robust methodology was supervised by Frédéric Gonand, professor of economics at Paris Dauphine-PSL University and former adviser to Christine Lagarde at Bercy. It is based on the collection of more than 2,000 data, quantified and public, broken down into 63 indicators which make it possible, after weighting according to their importance, to determine five levers of sovereignty.
Offensive, defensive and contributory sovereignty
The strength of technological innovation is assessed by the number of patents filed, R&D expenditure or partnerships with university chairs. The contribution to French economic power (or hard power) is measured according to the company’s global rank in a critical activity, its investment capacity thanks to available cash or its international market share. The contribution to the influence of France (soft-power) is interested in the positive media impact recorded by the company or in sponsorship with strong influence, whether sporting or cultural. So much for so-called offensive sovereignty.
In its more defensive aspect, the study also endeavors to estimate the independence of companies vis-à-vis foreign powers: who owns the capital? How many French people are in top management? Where are the emblematic sites located? Finally, the contributory aspect of sovereignty lists the number of jobs created in France, the links with SMEs or the intensity of certain social actions. All these data make it possible to objectively classify the members of the CAC 40, it being understood that the scores from 1 to 10 which appear in the extract opposite have no meaning in absolute terms but constitute comparison metrics.
Beware of floating capital on the stock market
Main lesson of this list: the champions of sovereignty are not necessarily those we believe. Defense, with Safran (1st), Thales (3rd) and Dassault Systèmes (11th), logically figures prominently in the top 15, due to its strategic nature and the proximity of this industry to the public authorities. Same thing for energy, represented by TotalEnergies (6th) and Engie (9th). But luxury and cosmetics are not to be outdone, as illustrated by the performances of LVMH (5th), Hermès (8th) and L’Oréal (10th). As for the Bouygues group (2nd), it made a remarkable entry on the podium, thanks in particular to the takeover of Equans from Engie, which enabled it to increase its workforce in France by 27,000 people.
“Bouygues is also a model of independence in terms of governance and capital, specifies Pierre-Marie de Berny, the founder of the firm Vélite. It is one of the only two companies in the CAC 40, with Orange (4th ), whose key managers are all French. The identified holders of its capital are more than 51% French. And the share of employee shareholding – 21.3% – is five times higher than the average of the CAC. elements that give it a formidable capacity to resist takeovers.” Not to mention that the floating capital on the Bouygues Stock Exchange is only 47.5%, against 72.7% on average for the index. “Our large groups are on the whole very poorly controlled, continues Pierre-Marie de Berny. This is a real cause for concern because the fewer the reference shareholders, the greater the threat from activist funds.
3755 INFOG CAC 40
© / Art Press
STMicroelectronics less and less French
At the bottom of the ranking (37th), one company is attracting particular attention this year: STMicroelectronics. In the crucial semiconductor market, where the main players are Taiwanese (TSMC, UMC), Korean (Samsung) or American (GlobalFoundries), the Franco-Italian company, leader in Europe, “is dangerously detached from one of his two countries of origin”, notes the cabinet. In this case, France. R&D is mainly located outside our borders. Only a third of the top management is of French nationality. It has only 13.7% of identified French shareholders, corresponding to the shares of Bpifrance. As for its website, it is readable only in English, Chinese and Japanese.
A few days ago, Bruno Le Maire however announced that the State was going to put its hand in the pocket for the construction of a new factory in Crolles, in Isère. Amount of the check: 2.9 billion euros, out of the 7.5 billion planned overall. This is the most significant public aid for an industrial project since 2017. Even though the production of this site, which should create a thousand jobs, will be 58% due to STMicroelectronics’ partner in the operation, namely… the American GlobalFoundries. “The good news is that 5% of the annual volumes will be reserved for France’s sovereign needs, in national security for example. But at the same time, more than half of this windfall of public money will finance the production chain, and the interests, of a foreign group”, points out Pierre-Marie de Berny.
The price to pay to keep an essential resource in France? The pill would go better if the future of the company was written in blue-white-red. No guarantee to date, unfortunately. The story of ArcelorMittal, 40th and good last on the list, is worth warning. Heir to the French Usinor, then to the European Arcelor, the steel giant has gradually moved away from the motherland since its acquisition by the Indian magnate Lakshmi Mittal in 2006. Over the past ten years, its workforce has shrunk from 25 % in France and 30% in Europe.