Didier Pineau-Valencienne, shock figure of French industrial employers, died at the age of 93

He had radically transformed the Schneider group. Didier Pineau-Valencienne, former big boss of French industry, died Thursday December 19 at the age of 93, his family announced. A mass will be celebrated Tuesday in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, and he will be buried Friday in Vendée, according to the death notice published by his family in Le Figaro.

Born in 1931 into a family of Vendée doctors, Didier Pineau-Valencienne studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris, before joining HEC then the business school of Dartmouth College in the United States. Passionate about poetry, he joined Gallimard, then joined the Franco-Belgian group Empain-Schneider in 1958. He managed subsidiaries in difficulty, then joined Rhône-Poulenc in 1973, where he refined his image as a business turnaround .

Returning to Schneider in 1981, as president, Didier Pineau-Valencienne refocused the company on the electricity professions. The steel industry and shipyards are sold, as are packaging, machine tools, sports and leisure activities, telephony, real estate, etc.“From the Schneider of 1981, nothing remains, except the name”he said. In 1984, “DPV breaks it” cannot avoid the resounding liquidation of Creusot-Loire, the largest bankruptcy in French industry, affecting nearly 30,000 employees. Cumbersome nicknames flourish to describe the boss, standard bearer of pure and hard capitalism: “gravedigger”, “butcher”, “unscrupulous raider”…

In 1988, Didier Pineau-Valencienne took over the Grenoble group Télémécanique and merged it with its subsidiary Merlin Gerin. His effigy is burned by disgruntled employees. Another battle, the hostile takeover bid in 1991 for the American electrician Square D.

For Jean-Pascal Tricoire, current CEO of Schneider Electric, “DPV embodied the landing of technical companies in finance. He was the man of capitalism, of mergers and acquisitions… a great financier. Without this era, the Schneider of today would not exist” .

But in 1994, Didier Pineau-Valencienne was indicted for alleged irregularities in the management of Belgian subsidiaries. Interrogated in Brussels, he was imprisoned for 12 days. This father of four children, a practicing Catholic, will make the headlines one last time in 2006, at the age of 75, with the trial of the Belgian case. He was found guilty, but not sentenced due in particular to the age of the facts.