Paris (AFP)
Proposed by Emmanuel Macron as French European Commissioner, the CEO of IT group Atos Thierry Breton is a passionate technology boss, who has never stayed very far from politics.
Her curly hair now graying, her voice a little jerky where words jostle sometimes to follow the ideas that fuse are familiar for decades of places of French power.
Before the press, the former Minister of Economy Jacques Chirac (2005-2007) is never as animated as when he talks about quantum computing or supercomputers, projects managed within Atos by the division "Big data and cybersecurity" to double-digit growth, and on which he places high hopes.
And this co-author, in 1984, of an anticipatory novel about the computer war ("Softwar", Robert Laffont) is never short of enthusiasm to defend the possibilities of the European tech.
Thursday morning, commenting on Atos quarterly results after the public announcement of his appointment for Brussels, he told a financial analyst that we could "see, in the future, European companies do better than US companies ".
"You have to get used to it," he added in his fluent English but tinged with a strong French accent.
Thierry Breton, a 64-year-old Supelec engineer, has been head of several large French computer and technology companies, Bull, Thomson Multimedia, France Telecom and Atos.
For a long time, his critics pointed out that he had never orchestrated his projects until the end, each time leaving a company for another.
But the criticism can hardly be made for Atos, which he was named chairman of the board in November 2008 before becoming CEO in February 2009.
He led Atos for ten years and, under his leadership, the group experienced strong growth, multiplying acquisitions and entering the CAC 40 in 2017.
- Rigorous and boosted manager -
In 2011, the group entered into a strategic partnership with the German industrial giant Siemens, which transferred its IT solutions and services business to Atos in exchange for a substantial stake in the French group.
Thierry Breton began his career in New York in the 1980s, creating a computer engineering company, Forma Systems.
He achieved managerial recognition by becoming the managing director of Bull, a French computer group with a history of turbulence, and Thomson Multimédia, from 1997 to 2002, who was seeking an appeal after his abortive privatization and managed to break out of unstuck. In this position, he imposes the image of a rigorous and high-powered manager, between permanent restructuring programs and reorientation out of consumer electronics.
In October 2002, he took the helm of France Telecom which collapses under a debt bordering the 70 billion euros. With the help of the State, it imposes a drastic recovery plan over three years that allows the company to recover and lead to its change of status in private enterprise.
In politics, Thierry Breton owes much of his rise to the former Minister René Monory, he was the technical adviser to the Ministry of Education and he he blew the idea of Futuroscope theme park.
When he became minister of the economy of the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin in 2005, it focuses in particular on the reduction of the public debt.
In 2016, during the preparation of the presidential election, this convinced right-wing man supports Alain Juppé during the primary of the right. He then ranks behind François Fillon, but finally decides before the first round to support Emmanuel Macron, for fear of seeing a duel between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen in the second round.
© 2019 AFP