Didier Pineau-Valencienne, figure of French industrial employers and president of Schneider, has died

Figure of French industrial employers, Didier Pineau-Valencienne died Thursday at the age of 93, his family announced on Sunday December 22. Nicknamed “DPV”, he remained at the head of the Schneider electrical equipment group for eighteen years, before handing over the reins in 1999. The funeral mass will be celebrated on Tuesday December 24 in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, and he will be buried Friday December 27 at the cemetery of Saint-Hilaire-du-Bois in Vendée, where he was from, according to a notice published in Le Figaro.

Born on March 21, 1931 into a family of Vendée doctors, this father of four children, a practicing Catholic, chose business for his part. After the Janson-de-Sailly high school in Paris, he joined HEC, then the business school from Dartmouth College (New Hampshire) in the United States, an unusual American foray at the time.

His career began at Gallimard Editions, where this literature enthusiast satisfied his love for poetry and came across the manuscripts of André Malraux and Albert Camus. But the world of publishing turns out to be too narrow for Didier Pineau-Valencienne. In 1958 he joined the Franco-Belgian group Empain-Schneider. He managed subsidiaries in difficulty there, before joining Rhône-Poulenc in 1973, where he refined his image as a business recovery under the authority of Jean Gandois, future boss of bosses.

Flag bearer of pure capitalism

Returning to Schneider in 1981, as president, he refocused on the electricity professions this company created forty-five years earlier by the Schneider brothers and which had become a heterogeneous conglomerate of 150 companies. 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, he could not avoid the resounding liquidation of Creusot-Loire, the largest bankruptcy in French industry with nearly 30,000 employees affected. Cumbersome nicknames flourish to describe this round-looking boss, but the standard-bearer of pure and hard capitalism: “gravedigger”, « boucher », “unscrupulous raider”…In his memoirs, Baron Empain compares him to “a bloodthirsty Doctor Attila who did not hesitate to make people bleed and cry to put a society back on its feet”.

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. “It took an iron will”remembers Gaël de La Rochère, one of his collaborators, for Agence France-Presse.

The operation opens the doors to the United States for Schneider. The New Economist elects Didier Pineau-Valencienne “manager of the year 1991”. In eighteen years, turnover has multiplied by 17, the group has been reduced from debt. “We owe DPV for cleaning up the conglomerate left by the family adventure”Jean-Pascal Tricoire, current CEO of Schneider Electric, told Agence France-Presse, adding: “It took this courage, in the 1980s which were not very favorable to restructuring: we were more in the process of nationalizing everything! »

Found guilty of forgery and fraud

But in 1994, Didier Pineau-Valencienne was charged with forgery and fraud for alleged irregularities in the management of two Belgian subsidiaries. Coming to Brussels for interrogation, he was incarcerated for twelve days. The event marks the business community and strains Franco-Belgian diplomatic relations.

This affair forced him to step aside in 1997 behind Ernest-Antoine Seillière when he succeeded Jean Gandois as president of the National Council of French Employers (CNPF, now Medef). Ultimately, he was found guilty in 2006, but was not sentenced due in particular to the age of the facts.

At the beginning of 2020, he appeared, alert and smiling, on television sets, for a book devoted to his love of reading. With Gaël de La Rochère, he had recently invested in an electrical equipment company, Comeca, and was “very diligent in advice”at the age of 90.