Bonum Certa Men Certa

Understanding Thierry Breton: What Thierry Did Next...

Overview





Understanding Thierry Breton



Further parts pending review and research




Thierry Breton at Atos



Summary: "Whether by coincidence or not, when Atos announced in 2010 that it would acquire Siemens’ IT unit, it was the 32-year-old Macron at Rothschild who advised Breton on the deal."

The wikipedia.org entry for Thierry Breton describes his departure from political office and his return to the world of private enterprise as follows:



"After two years of government service (2005–2007) he became in November 2008 the active chairman and CEO of Atos S.A., formerly Atos Origin. On the announcement of his nomination the share price, which was previously valued at 18 euros, rose by 7.84%."

Well that's nice to know, isn't it?

"At the time of writing, the website is offline probably in an attempt to block any inquisitive researchers while Thierry's candidacy for EU Commissioner is under scrutiny."But what exactly was Thierry up to between May 2007 when he left Bercy and November 2008 when he moved into the CEO's office at Atos?

According to Wikipedia, after leaving the government, Breton "briefly worked as professor at Harvard Business School (2007–2008) where he taught Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA)."

This is corroborated by the Financial Times report of 11 July 2007: "French finance minister heads for Harvard".

Breton's own website confirms the Harvard story. At the time of writing, the website is offline probably in an attempt to block any inquisitive researchers while Thierry's candidacy for EU Commissioner is under scrutiny.

Thierry is offline
The website https://thierry-breton.com is currently inaccessible.
Is somebody trying to hide something?



However, with the help of Google's web cache of the site we learn the following:

"Most recently, before joining Atos, he was a professor at Harvard Business School, teaching leadership and corporate accountability."

"Thankfully we have the French establishment mouthpiece Les Echos to help us join the dots."But there is a gap in the narrative. One small but interesting detail is missing…

Thankfully we have the French establishment mouthpiece Les Echos to help us join the dots.

In September 2007, Les Echos informed its readers that the former Minister for the Economy had taken up a position as a "senior advisor" with the renowned French bank Rothschild & Cie: Thierry Breton devient €« senior advisor €» chez Rothschild

Rothschild and Cie



At Rothschild & Cie, Breton was part of a team of three senior advisers that included the chairman of Rothschild’s German branch, Klaus Mangold, who from 2007 to 2019 sat on the board of directors of Alstom S.A., a French multinational company operating worldwide in rail transport markets, active in the fields of passenger transportation, signalling and locomotives.

Shortly after Breton moved to Rothschild & Cie, an up-and-coming boy-wonder by the name of Emmanuel Macron decided to leave the security of his civil service post at the Ministry for the Economy, to take up a more dynamic private sector job at the this prestigious financial institution.

"Whether by coincidence or not, when Atos announced in 2010 that it would acquire Siemens’ IT unit, it was the 32-year-old Macron at Rothschild who advised Breton on the deal."Macron, a graduate of the elite ENA, had worked at the Inspection générale des finances (IGF), a key department of the Ministry for the Economy, between 2004 and 2007. This overlaps with Breton's term of office as Minister so it's a fair bet that their paths already crossed at some point during that time.

Whether by coincidence or not, when Atos announced in 2010 that it would acquire Siemens’ IT unit, it was the 32-year-old Macron at Rothschild who advised Breton on the deal.

In August 2014 Macron departed from the private sector to enter the political arena as Minister for Economy in the Socialist government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

We will revisit the Macron connection later on but for the moment let's stick with Breton's post-ministerial business career at Atos.

In 2008 Atos had 50,000 employees and generated a sales revenue of € 5.5 billion but according to Breton it was "managed too compartmentally" and the company's inferior profitability margins relative to its competitors required a complete transformation plan.

It was another golden opportunity for the "turnaround king" to flex his managerial muscles.

In July 2011, with a little help from his "friends" at Rothschild & Cie, Breton orchestrated the acquisition of the IT activities of German industry group Siemens.

"It was another golden opportunity for the "turnaround king" to flex his managerial muscles."This elevated Atos to rank number one among the European IT services players and in the Top 5 worldwide, with 75,000 employees in 42 countries.

The deal, valued at € 850 million, was the biggest Franco-German transaction since an alliance between Germany's premium carmaker Daimler and France's Renault established in 2010. The move was greeted by the financial markets and the Atos share price rose by 11.6%.

With the integration of 28,000 Siemens employees Atos became one of the most important Franco-German industrial collaborations since Airbus, manifested by a financial partnership (Siemens took 15% of Atos’ capital), and a common investment fund of 100 million euros was created as well as a joint response to international tenders. This strategy was awarded the prize for Industrial cooperation by the Franco-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In 2012 Breton adopted the Societas Europaea legal form for Atos which gave the company two headquarters, one in France and a second in Munich, Germany.

In parallel, he participated in other European institutional projects in which the Franco-German partnership played a central role such as the European Commission’s European Cloud Partnership (2012–2014) over which he co-presided with Jim Snabe, the joint CEO of the German software company SAP.

In May 2014 Breton initiated the takeover of French IT industry player Bull, where he had first made his mark as a "turnaround wizard" in the 1990s. The aim was to turn Atos into a global player in Big Data and Cybersecurity and to enable Atos to position itself in the supercomputing segment by becoming the sole European manufacturer of such equipment.

"This elevated Atos to rank number one among the European IT services players and in the Top 5 worldwide, with 75,000 employees in 42 countries."Six months later Atos announced the acquisition of Xerox’s IT outsourcing activities along with a strategic partnership with the American company. This operation made Atos one of the five largest digital companies in the world.

Within the space of six years the company had doubled in size to a headcount of around 100,000 employees.

By May 2015 the company's market capitalization had risen to € 7.29 billion euros, an increase of more than € 5 billion compared with November 2008 when Breton took over as CEO. The market share price of Atos grew by 268% in five years.

But the success story of Atos has a darker side which is likely to be familiar to UK readers.

"But the success story of Atos has a darker side which is likely to be familiar to UK readers."Along with other big corporate "service providers" like Serco, G4S, Capita, Amey and Carillion, Atos was one of the main beneficiaries of government largesse in the area of public service "outsourcing" during the late 1990s and the first decade and a half of the new millenium.

In the next part we will take a look at how Atos became a toxic brand in the UK because of its dubious role in assessing disability benefit eligibility.

Recent Techrights' Posts

BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
 
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
Links for the day
Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025