In good business sponsor Ambroise Roux leaves said

April 1999. They are all there: politicians, the President of the Republic Jacques Chirac in the lead, patterns of press, celebrities, not counting, of course, the "stars" of the CAC 40, François Pinault, Michel Pébereau, Jean-Louis Beffa or while still Jean-Marie Messier, then at the height of its glory. All came to a last tribute to their "friend" Ambroise Roux, former CEO of the company General d ' Electricité (CGE), a prominent member of the national Council of French employers (CNPF, the current Medef), founder and host of the Association of private companies (Afep), a man of influence if it is, who died of a heart attack a few days earlier at his home in Montfort-l'Amaury, at the age of soixante-dix-sept years.

The man had something a little outdated. "All his breathing the past: the first name, the suit three parts, the pants back to the sternum, the finger in the gusset, pie shovel passes, vocabulary hemmed obsolete forms and gravelures of another age, the displayed monarchism, balzacienne design business", wrote shortly after its disappearance, Nathalie Bensahel and Pascal Riché in the newspaper "liberation". Monarchist, "Ambroise", as it was called to Paris, was indeed, the point to attend every year the anniversary mass for the death of Louis XVI. Hard drive - he ate not less than 400 pounds per year-, end gourmet and patent smoking large cigars, human habits, such as the one to take three months of vacation each year. Passionate about parapsychology, he wrote a book on the subject - "The Science and the psychic", in 1987 - and was even install the CGE a laboratory for studies on psychic phenomena! Became Chairman of the CGE in 1970, one of his first decisions was to sign a memorandum prohibiting the wearing of trousers for women. But more than anything, Ambroise Roux loved this halo of mystery surrounding his person. "I like that people talk about me by allusions", he said often. Nothing does he pleased more than drag without the air, in a conversation, a discreet allusion to his visits in the evening at the Elysee Palace. "The other day, the President told me...".

Man of influence, Ambroise Roux was at the end of the 1950s. Born in 1922 in a bourgeois family, son of one of the closest collaborators of the pattern of news Jean Prouvost, this X-bridges began his career in 1943 as an engineer in the first constituency of electricity in Paris. The story tells that to obtain his diploma of the school of electrical, essential for progress in the career but that he had neither the time nor the inclination to prepare, Ambroise Roux would have proposed an Exchange to the Director of this school, also President of a company of industrial mechanics: delivery priority electricity - a rare commodity at the time - to turn its machines against waivers of courses and the possibility to choose her subject in exams! First illustration of the power of influence "Ambroise" would prevail until the end of his life.

It will make and undo the Presidents to go its own way

Beauvoir, bridge engineer, Chief Engineer of electricity. At the end of the second world war, it is a key for a young ambitious man asset. At the time of reconstruction, the France's pressing engineering of high level... and especially blank of any compromise with the occupation and the Vichy regime. Discredited and anxious to forget for some time, employers of pre-war leaves for his part, set up these "new men", ten or twenty years later, form the bulk of business leaders. In the 1940s and 1950s, the school and its network thus become the crucible for a new elite which people ministerial and directions of large industrial companies. Ambroise Roux is one of these new men. In 1951, noticed by Jean-Marie Louvel, Beauvoir, former Director of electricity at the Ministry of industry and now Minister MRP industry, it is proposed to lead his cabinet. At the age of twenty-nine, Ambroise Roux has just put one foot in the spheres of power. This period, which will last four years is crucial in the career of the young engineer. Very taken by the political aspects of his duties, Jean-Marie Louvel leaves in effect carte blanche to his Chief of staff. Very active, it is thus at the heart of key industrial issues of post-war: the Plan, the pool steel-coal, oil search in the Sahara, the development of the production capacity of the new EDF... The opportunity to forge links with all the France account of decision makers. Ambroise Roux is and will always remain a man of network.

In 1954, the fall of the Laniel Government forced Jean-Marie Louvel to leave office. This Ambroise Roux without collapse. The network of the Polytechnique will once again help them. At the request of Henri Lafond, major X, and the school of mines, former Director of the mines, coal and oil to the Ministry of industry in the years 1941-1942 and converted in the large Bank, Jacques Jourdain, President and CEO of the Compagnie Générale d ' Electricité, agrees to its Deputy Director. Ten years later, to the disappearance of Jordan, Ambroise Roux will have the intelligence to his mentor, Jean-Marie Louvel, head of the CGE. Recognizing, the is will pleased to his former Chief of staff to the Department of industry his successor. He must wait until 1970 for access to the head of the company.

But, as before that date, the all-powerful CGE has become the main anchor of the power of Ambroise Roux. It must be said that with its 20,000 employees and its many plants in France, the company is one of the first French companies. Specializing in the manufacture of electrical equipment, she lives much of public contracts, on the aid of the State, incentives and subsidies. The CGE, Ambroise Roux becomes a figure in the establishment of the business at the beginning of the 1960s. In 1961, again thanks to the intervention of Henri Lafond, he made his entry into the CNPF and takes the Presidency of the general economic commission (GEC).

With the CGE, the CNPF will be the other "pillar" of the power of Ambroise Roux. If it will always refuse to preside over the business Union, it will and unravel the Presidents as it sees fit.

Under his chairmanship, the CEG becomes the real brains of the CNPF and, more importantly, a Ministry of industry. As early as 1962, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, took the habit to consult Ambroise Roux. The two men share a same belief: it is developing its industry and by emerging genuine champions that the France will preserve its rank. This industrializing view of Ambroise Roux a accustomed corridors of Matignon and, later, the Elysee Palace. Between Pompidou and employers, a real honey moon moved that will last until the disappearance of the head of State, in 1974. It allows Ambroise Roux place CGE he leads in the centre of large industrial labourers: the company has a place in the international company for computer science (ITCS), created in 1966. Partner of CNET in the time switch, it is a major player in Telecom with its subsidiary CIT, CIT-Alcatel become after the merger with Alcatel in 1968. It is also in the nuclear and enjoys a near monopoly in the manufacture of the turbogenerators of plants, especially since the absorption of Alsthom. Completed in 1970, this operation marked the victory of Ambroise Roux against its arch-rival Paul Richard, the pattern of Thomson.

Always stay in the shade

With Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, current going less well. It said the industrial, in the presidential election of 1974, publicly supported the Gaullist candidate Chaban-Delmas, even though he was very careful to take the VGE Labour Fund campaign. Firmly installed at the head of the CGE, which the Board of Directors of friends, he is completely acquired, is failed to be elected at the head of the very influential Association of large French companies (Agref), it keeps its entries in the ministries and retains all its influence to the CNPF. The election of François Mitterrand could break this beautiful mechanics, sentencing him to an endless wilderness. This is not the case. Probably must Ambroise Roux, s corruptions which has insisted urbi et orbi he would leave the Presidency of the CGE in the event of nationalization, run in 1982 when the company goes back to the State. But the man is fascinated by the new President of the Republic, that he met several times in the 1950s and 1960s, just as the former first Secretary of the PS is by this representative almost caricature of big business. "I see red as one of my stronger opponents but I have no difficulty in a dialogue with him." "Moreover, I know that, when it will be in the interest of the France, we will never real disagreement", a custom to François Mitterrand. The head of State, who doesn't love the CNPF and its new President, Yvon Gattaz, on the other hand has a low for the true entrepreneur is Ambroise Roux in his eyes. He also knows that it has with the French private companies (Afep) Association, of a real power that it be. The Afep is last found in the "Ambroise". He created in December 1982, just after his departure from the CGE. High of around 30 members - there are patterns of L'Oreal, Moët-Hennessy, Accor, the Lyonnaise des Eaux, Béghin-Say, Marine-Wendel or the French petroleum company-, it is, according to his own words, "a machine to defend the labour interests".But it is also, for Roux, a way to continue to build relationships in the establishment of the business. It is, thus, that note and enter her club businessman promised a bright future: François Pinault.

As early as 1983, Ambroise Roux has in any case notified its members: the Afep from reveling in a frontal opposition with the left in power, must speak to him and make him reforms. With two golden rules: never wear the debate on the public square fails; do not claim authorship success. In short, always stay in the shade. The Afep will thus be one of the artisans of the conversion from the left to economic realism. Business to it including the first law on stock options, but also the taxation of capital gains to 33.33 instead of 50 previously. Two reforms negotiated directly between Ambroise Roux and Pierre Bérégovoy, then Minister of economy and finance. Later, it is still the Afep who "invented" the "carry back", this device to postpone tax losses on past profits and taken over by the left.

The return of the right to power in 1986, marks the triumph of the former President and CEO of the CGE. Sixty-four years, it is more than ever in court, close to Edouard Balladur, he was known at the time of Pompidou and he, a time, placed at the head of one of the subsidiaries of the company. The Afep then moult in the House of influence, involved in the formation of hard core of shareholders in the privatisation and speaker in the appointment of Presidents - to the privatized CGE, Ambroise Roux is thus replacing Georges Pébereau by Pierre Suard. This power of the shadows which allows it to evolve in the business community and policy, it will lose ever. It is he who, in 1994, persuaded the Board of Directors of General water to replace the head of the company Guy Dejouany by Jean-Marie Messier, he was known to the Balladur cabinet when he was in the privatizations of 1986; He still, the same year, managed to push out Pierre Suard, replace it with Serge Tchuruk; He always who, a few weeks before his death, flies to the rescue of Société Générale, victim of a Flash of the BNP raid. We see his hand everywhere. Including the decision taken by Jacques Chirac in 1997 to dissolve the National Assembly, decision that it would be highly recommended. In good business sponsor, Ambroise Roux leaves said. "The other day, the President told me...".