Bonum Certa Men Certa

Understanding Thierry Breton: In the Beginning...

Overview





Understanding Thierry Breton



Further parts pending review and research




Bretton's profile



Summary: Career roundup of Thierry Breton, possibly the next EU Commissioner

IN the course of a high-profile career which has spanned the worlds of business and politics since the 1990s, Thierry Breton has grown accustomed to rubbing shoulders with the great and good of the French elite.



But it wasn't always plain sailing for the curly-haired computer whiz-kid who was born in Paris in 1955.

"He's more of a second-rank "non-commissioned officer", a hands-on “man of action” and ruthless "cost-killer" who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and who gets called in by the generals to act as a hatchet-man when there's a job to be done."Unlike his political patrons from UMP circles, Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin and, more recently, Emmanuel Macron, Breton is not a graduate of the illustrious Ecole Nationale d'Administration and so he does not belong to the uppermost echelons of the French administrative and political elite.

He's more of a second-rank "non-commissioned officer", a hands-on “man of action” and ruthless "cost-killer" who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and who gets called in by the generals to act as a hatchet-man when there's a job to be done.

Bretton in white coat
A hands-on “man of action” and ruthless "costkiller" who gets called in to act as a hatchet-man when there's a job to be done.



To appreciate Breton's career, it is helpful to bear in mind that France's economic and political leadership are closely intertwined under an economic policy called "dirigisme", in which technocratic elites from government, finance and industry, all products of the grandes écoles, move with ease between the public and private sectors and confer closely amongst each other to "optimise economic conditions" - mostly for their own benefit as you might have guessed.

"Breton's career got off to an inauspicious start when he failed his entrance exams to the grandes écoles, France’s elite institutions of higher education."Breton is probably best understood as a state-sponsored entrepreneurial poster-boy whose renommé has been carefully built up and inflated to mythical proportions by the political establishment.

This iconic figure is wheeled out at regular intervals as part of a public spectacle designed to maintain the carefully cultivated façade of a meritocratic land of “Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité” which masks the ugly truth of the rule by stealth of a patrician plutocratic elite.

Bretton, LEF
The Land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity where some animals are more equal than others.



Breton's career got off to an inauspicious start when he failed his entrance exams to the grandes écoles, France’s elite institutions of higher education.

Bretton when young
Young Thierry failed to make the grade for the elite grandes écoles.



Instead he had to make do with attending the far less prestigious École Supérieure d'Électricité for engineering in Paris from where he went on to teach mathematics and information technology at the Lycée Francais, a French high school in New York City, from 1979 to 1981.

"Instead he had to make do with attending the far less prestigious École Supérieure d'Électricité for engineering in Paris from where he went on to teach mathematics and information technology at the Lycée Francais, a French high school in New York City, from 1979 to 1981."His first foray into the business world came in 1981, when he became chairman and CEO of Forma Systèmes, a systems-analysis and software-engineering concern, where he remained until 1986.

He then took a position as a consultant to the French Ministry of Education and Research and from 1986 to 1990 he occupied himself designing the Futuroscope open-air science and technology theme park in Poitiers under the patronage of the prominent Gaullist politician René Monory.

In 1990 Breton became the CEO of CGI Group, a service-development company. He stayed at CGI until 1993, when he got his first big break as the French government hired him to become deputy director of the Bull Group, the troubled French computer manufacturer.

Breton's restructuring brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy and it allowed the young executive to claim his first successful corporate recovery.

"After taking over at Thomson, he closed low-performing factories in Germany and the U.S., moving production to Latin America and Eastern Europe, and he slashed U.S. management ranks by 20 percent."In 1997 Breton was named chairman and CEO of France's Thomson Multimedia, a government-owned consumer-electronics company that sold televisions and VCRs under the Thomson, Kenwood, and RCA names and which was tottering on the verge of collapse.

A year before his appointment, Thomson had been in such a shambles that France's prime minister had failed in his efforts to unload the company on the South Korean Daewoo for a single franc.

Breton was an aggressive CEO and he quickly gained a name as a ruthless “cost-killer” who was not afraid to face down objections to his plans.

After taking over at Thomson, he closed low-performing factories in Germany and the U.S., moving production to Latin America and Eastern Europe, and he slashed U.S. management ranks by 20 percent.

He used share offerings to generate case and also diversified the company's businesses, bringing Thomson into interactive television, electronic publishing, and the Internet, as well as the higher-margin business of digital film-editing services.

"Some industry analysts believed that Breton received too much credit for the Thomson turnaround, saying the company's recovery had more to do with agreements made before Breton came on board."By 1999 Thomson was turning a $230 million profit on sales of $6.5 billion. By the time Breton left in 2002, revenues had increased by more than 80 percent and Thomson was outperforming Sony, Matsushita, and Philips, its major consumer-electronics competitors.

Some industry analysts believed that Breton received too much credit for the Thomson turnaround, saying the company's recovery had more to do with agreements made before Breton came on board.

For instance, when Thomson bought RCA from General Electric in 1988, the French company agreed to let General Electric keep RCA's patents for 10 years as part of the purchase agreement. Thomson started to reap significant revenues from these patents from 1999 onwards. By 2001, patents and licensing earnings were generating € 398.8 million for the company.

Breton dismissed his critics by insisting that the Thomson's recovery was due to his reorganisation plans and that it had been under way well before the RCA patent revenues started coming in.

Others criticized Breton for the problems the computer-maker Bull Group ran into during the early 2000s, suggesting that the troubles stemmed from Breton's earlier tenure at the helm of that company.

But whatever the truth may be, Breton had succeeded in cementing his reputation in the public eye as France's "turnaround king".

DENMARK-FRANCE POLITICS DIPLOMACY ROYALS
By 2002 Breton's reputation as France's "turnaround king" was firmly established.



And so it came as no surprise when the French government decided to call on his services once again in 2002, this time to rescue the ailing France Télécom. We will take a look at this important milestone in his career in part 2.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete