Montpellier (AFP)
Syrian "child of the desert", the French billionaire Mohed Altrad has forged an extraordinary destiny. Patron of an international group, novelist, key man of French rugby, he now wants to conquer the town hall of Montpellier, the city that "welcomed" him.
"I remained a desert child who braved many difficulties," said Mohed Altrad in a hushed voice.
First French sacred World entrepreneur of the year in 2015, 31st fortune in France in 2019, according to Challenges, with a heritage estimated at 3.4 billion euros, Mr. Altrad told in one of his novels the circumstances of his birth , on an undetermined date between 1948 and 1951.
Fruit of the rape by a tribal chief of a Bedouin teenager who will die of grief, the orphan bet on education. A good student, he ended up winning a grant from the Syrian government to study in Montpellier, the city of his "second birth", where he arrived in 1970, without speaking French and penniless.
"Soaked in oriental culture", Mohed Altrad said he felt for decades "fully French". Since 1972, he has never returned to his country of origin, where he could "no longer find any trace" of what he had known, he said about the conflict that is tearing Syria apart.
"I did everything here in Montpellier: learning the language, studying (science, followed by a doctorate in computer science in Paris), my group, the rugby club ...", summarizes he.
- "Hardness" -
In 1985, Mohed Altrad took over a modest Hérault scaffolding company which he transformed into an international empire, via multiple acquisitions and a reorientation towards industrial services. Employing 42,000 people, including around 10,000 in France, the Altrad group, based in Montpellier, remains little known in France, but is very active in the oil and gas sector, and present in Great Britain, the Middle East, Africa and in Asia.
At the same time, in 2011, this tennis player who had never been interested in the oval ball took over the Montpellier Hérault Rugby (MHR), on the verge of bankruptcy. He straightens the club but makes many enemies, especially among the presidents of the Top 14, "a very conservative little world", which he criticizes the "unsustainable" economic model.
Mohed Altrad, who presents himself as a "humanist", author of novels, essays and management books, is described by his supporters as a "man of vision and solutions". But his adversaries underline his "excessive ambition" and his "hardness when one opposes his will".
About collaborators from whom he sometimes separated abruptly, like the trainer Fabien Galthié, today selector of the XV of France, he decides: "Someone who does not do his job in spite of all that one lavishes him as advice, we + get it out + of course, because it is collective success that is at stake ".
In 2017, Altrad is the first sponsor to register his name on the jersey of the XV of France. But his controversial links with the president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR) Bernard Laporte led the national financial prosecutor's office (PNF) to open an investigation, still underway.
- Social ambition -
Married and father of five, the billionaire receives at the "Cottage", his beautiful Montpellier home nestled in a park. "I am not attracted to money, it is the great achievements that interest me", comments the septuagenarian with a neat beard and salt and pepper hair.
His detractors have promised him a stinging defeat since he launched himself in September at the head of an eclectic team in the battle for the municipal elections.
"I am neither on the left because I was born poor, nor on the right because I became rich," said this atypical candidate who did not get the support of La République en Marche, a hoped-for time.
After having accepted "without being fooled" under François Hollande a mission "without budget" in favor of 1,500 disadvantaged neighborhoods, the business manager today assures that he wants to lead in Montpellier "a very ambitious social policy" and achieve "full employment "by using its international address book.
© 2020 AFP