Its task is immense and its mission urgent, in a context of public finance crisis. The current director general of the Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), Eric Lombard, was promoted on Monday, December 23, to Minister of Economy and Finance within the Bayrou government. Also responsible for industrial and digital sovereignty, he will be supported by two ministers and three delegate ministers. He will very quickly have to have close discussions with Brussels: France is one of Europe's bad students with a public deficit which should reach 6.1% of GDP this year and a public debt of 3,300 billion euros.
Arriving at the CDC at the end of 2017, this economic technician's achievements include the creation of the Banque des Territoires, the catastrophic recovery of Orpea (now Emeis) and the merger between CNP Assurances and the Bank. Postal. Managing these files did not prevent him from discussing politics, going beyond the reserve expected of a boss of “the Fund”. “How do you manage a financial institution in the world of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, to name three great progressive and enlightened democrats?”he asked himself at the beginning of the month, during a meeting organized by the Europe-finances-regulations association (AEFR). “I think we have to look at things with confidence and above all by being extremely active”he replied.
A graduate of HEC in 1981, now aged 66, Eric Lombard began his career within the Paribas bank, before joining the Mitterrandie in 1989 with Michel Sapin in particular, then returning to Paribas the day after the setback of the left in the legislative elections of 1993. He held several positions there, including that of head of mergers and acquisitions in banking and insurance. Eric Lombard then managed insurance for the in-house subsidiary of now BNP Paribas, then moved in 2013 to the insurer Generali France. He was pushed out in 2017 by the new general director of the Italian group, Philippe Donnet.
In the process, and at the end of a series of several weeks, he finally obtained the position at the head of the CDC at the end of 2017, replacing Pierre-René Lemas, pushed towards the exit by Emmanuel Macron after reaching the age of prefectural retirement, despite a mandate running until 2019. He had opportunely offered himself the position of general director of the Caisse des Dépôts “if the position were to be vacant” less than two weeks after the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017.
Interviewed by AFP in 2022, the boss of La Poste, Philippe Wahl, credited him with great technical skills and undeniable interpersonal skills. Eric Lombard, already expected at Bercy in May 2022, has already said “in line with Emmanuel Macron’s itinerary and project”. However, he does not hesitate to throw a few arrows at him, in particular against pension reform, the management of the State Participation Agency and the Public Treasury.
Two figures marked him in his youth, he explains in his book At the heart of useful financepublished in early 2022: his grandfather, a textile industrialist based in Troyes and art collector, and the socialist Michel Rocard, minister during the first mandate of François Mitterrand and Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991. “We don’t feel him internally as a man of the left”observes Salomé Vaillant, general secretary of the Unsa union. “For anything social, he’s not really there”she laments, contacted Monday by AFP.
