Éric Lombard took up his position at the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, less than three hours after his appointment, this Monday, December 23.
A graduate of HEC, this former colleague of Michel Sapin has headed the Caisse des Dépôts for seven years after spending part of his career at BNP Paribas.
Portrait of the man whose main mission will be to establish a budget which will escape the censorship of deputies.
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The government of François Bayrou
The transfer of power with Antoine Armand was scheduled immediately after his appointment. A sign that Éric Lombard has no time to waste given the urgency of the missions incumbent on him. Appointed Minister of Economy and Finance on the eve of Christmas Eve, the 66-year-old former banker will have to quickly provide France with a budget for 2025 while avoiding any censorship from deputies. Also responsible for industrial and digital sovereignty, he will be supported by two ministers and three delegate ministers.
He witnessed the September 11 attacks
Appointed at the end of 2017 by Emmanuel Macron as head of the Caisse des Dépôts, he was reappointed in 2023 and allowed this financial arm of the State to close this financial year with a net profit of 3.9 billion euros. An economic technician according to the AFP, Éric Lombard can pride himself on having created the Banque des Territoires, recovering Orpea (today Emeis) from disaster or even bringing together CNP Assurances and La Banque Postale. Interviewed by AFP in 2022, the boss of La Poste, Philippe Wahl, credited him with great technical skills and undeniable interpersonal skills. A senior civil service executive admitted that he had “did what was expected of him, in a context very constrained by the crisis”.
A graduate of HEC in 1981, Éric Lombard began his career at the Paribas bank before attempting political adventure under the presidency of François Mitterrand, advising Michel Sapin while he was Minister Delegate to the Minister of Justice (1991). -1992) then during his stay at Bercy. He returned to his previous employer the day after the left's setback in the 1993 legislative elections. He held several positions there, including that of head of mergers and acquisitions in banking and insurance.
On September 11, 2001, he met in one of the towers of the World Trade Center at 9 a.m. to finalize the acquisition of an American bank by his employer. It was from the windows of the BNP Paribas offices, located off Wall Street, where he arrived early, that he witnessed the attacks. “I was in a huge fog, it took me until the evening to come back to my senses, and even then, that wasn’t quite the case”he said last year on Classical Radio (new window).
Éric Lombard then managed insurance for the in-house subsidiary of now BNP Paribas, then joined the insurer Generali France in 2013. He was pushed out four years later by the new general director of the Italian group, Philippe Donnet. It was at this time that he suggested being interested in the head of the CDC to replace Pierre-René Lemas, pushed out by Emmanuel Macron after having reached the prefectural retirement age, despite a current mandate until 2019.
He also chairs the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
A great communicator, Éric Lombard is not afraid to speak to the media and travels extensively. A fervent lover of culture, he is president of the Théâtre des Champs Élysées and a music lover, according to an acquaintance. Passionate about sailing, he plays the piano and has also written a book. In At the heart of useful financepublished in early 2022, he recounted that his grandfather, a textile industrialist based in Troyes and an art collector, and the socialist Michel Rocard, minister during the first mandate of François Mitterrand and Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991, were two figures who had marked him. “We don’t feel him internally as a man of the left”note for AFP this Monday Salomé Vaillant, general secretary of the Unsa union. “For anything social, he’s not really there”she laments.
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Already expected at Bercy in May 2022, he has already said “in line with Emmanuel Macron’s itinerary and project”whom he does not hesitate to criticize. In particular, he made his remarks against pension reform, the management of the State Participation Agency and the Public Treasury. He regularly comes out of 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).
Frank speaking which should be useful when holding close discussions with Brussels. France is one of Europe's poor performers with a public deficit expected to reach 6.1% of GDP this year and a public debt of 3,300 billion euros.
