“Sun and sympathy”, this is how Albert Camus saw the young Didier Pineau-Valencienne when he autographed a copy of The Fall at the very end of the 1950s. The young man was then in charge of translations at Gallimard. A first job after finishing his studies at HEC then in the United States. His exchanges with Malraux, Aragon and Simenon left him with a deep love of literature and an exceptional collection of rare works.
But at less than thirty years old, in the midst of the boom of the thirty glorious years, Didier Pineau-Valencienne wanted to fight. And the “sun and sympathy” of the beginnings gradually transformed into “storm and anger”, as the businessman symbolized the great transformation of French capitalism.
Died this Thursday, December 19, he joins, at the age of 93, his father and his grandfather, both doctors at Caillère Saint-Hilaire in Vendée. A land where one learns early religious piety, moral discipline and the memory of the Revolutionary Wars. A land of entrepreneurs too.
His economic fight therefore did not begin at Gallimard but in the emblematic Empain group. Founded in 1880 by Edouard Louis Joseph Empain, the company had become at the beginning of the 20the century one of the largest industrial groups in Belgium, buying railway companies throughout France, building the Paris metro and the Cairo tramway, accumulating assets in all areas, from mining to banking in passing through machine tools and trains.
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