Anne Lauvergeon (born 2 August 1959) is a French businesswoman who was CEO of
Areva
Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through t ...
from 2001 to 2011. According to ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'', she is known internationally as one of the most prominent defenders of nuclear power.
Early life and education
Lauvergeon was born into a middle-class family in
Dijon
Dijon (, ; ; in Burgundian language (Oïl), Burgundian: ''Digion'') is a city in and the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Côte-d'Or Departments of France, department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region in eas ...
,
Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or () is a département in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of Northeastern France. In 2019, it had a population of 534,124. ; her father taught history and her mother was a social worker. Her grandfather was mayor of a village in Burgundy. She later grew up in
Orléans
Orléans (,["Orleans"](_blank)
(US) and [Agrégation
In France, the () is the most competitive and prestigious examination for civil service in the French public education
A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all stu ...]
in physics. Then she entered the
Corps des Mines. In 1983 she enrolled in her first vocational course with the Corps de Mines, in the iron and steel industry, at
Usinor. A second vocational course, in 1984, took place with the
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique, where she studied
chemical safety in Europe.
Career
Early beginnings
From 1985 to 1988, Lauvergeon was with the l'Inspection générale des carrières (IGC). In 1990, she was placed in charge of the mission for the international economy and foreign trade by French President
François Mitterrand. The following year, she became assistant secretary-general. She was then named "
sherpa", i.e. personal representative to the president, and responsible for preparing international meetings such as the
G7 summit.
In 1995, Lauvergeon joined the banking sector, and became a managing partner of
Lazard; she was the only woman partner at the firm. While at Lazard, she spent several months at the investment bank's New York office. In late 1996, she left the firm after difficulties with
Édouard Stern; according to media reports at the time, Stern had particularly taken exception to an invitation that Lauvergeon received to join the board of French aluminium company
Pechiney
Pechiney SA was a major aluminium conglomerate based in France. The company was acquired in 2003 by the Alcan Corporation, headquartered in Canada. In 2007, Alcan itself was taken over by mining giant Rio Tinto Alcan.
Prior to its acquisitio ...
.
In March 1997, Lauvergeon was appointed general director of
Alcatel, before becoming part of the group's executive committee. In that capacity, she was responsible for international activities and the company's industrial shareholdings in the energy and nuclear fields.
Career at Areva
In June 1999 Lauvergeon was appointed CEO of the group
Cogema
Orano Cycle, formerly COGEMA (''Compagnie générale des matières nucléaires'') and Areva NC, is a French nuclear fuel company. It is the main subsidiary of Orano S.A. It is an industrial group active in all stages of the uranium fuel cycle, ...
, succeeding
Jean Syrota, who resigned under pressure from
The Greens. In July 2001, she merged Cogema,
Framatome and other companies to create
Areva
Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through t ...
. At the head of the new company, she became a member of the small circle of women directing international corporations; in September 2002, daily economic newspaper ''
Les Échos'' uncovered a report from the French
Court of Auditors, citing Lauvergeon's compensation (salary of €305,000 with a bonus of €122,000) and "
golden parachute
A golden parachute is an agreement between a company and an employee (usually an upper executive) specifying that the employee will receive certain significant benefits if employment is terminated. These may include severance pay, cash bonuses, ...
" of two years' wages.
In 2004, Lauvergeon resisted a request from
Nicolas Sarkozy, then finance minister, to help bail out French transport and energy company
Alstom
Alstom SA () is a French multinational rolling stock manufacturer which operates worldwide in rail transport markets. It is active in the fields of passenger transportation, signaling, and locomotives, producing high-speed, suburban, regional ...
. When Alstom's leadership announced plans in 2008 to create a heavy-engineering conglomerate by combining Alstom and Areva in a single entity, Lauvergeon reiterated her opposition.
Under Lauvergeon, Areva instead developed into a one-stop shop for nuclear energy. The company became one of the world's top uranium producers and mining accounted for 12 per cent of its 2010 revenue. On 10 July 2008 in the French economic paper ''
Challenges'', she stated: "Uranium is a main part of our success. Our model is... Nespresso: we sell coffee machines and the coffee that fits them. And coffee is very profitable. So in China, we sold two nuclear islands, plus 35% of our uranium production. This is our integrated business model".
Towards the end of 2006, Areva encountered difficulties with its new
European Pressurized Reactor and announced an expected delay of eighteen months to three years for its delivery, according to the French daily newspaper ''
La Tribune''. The reactor is to be the first of its kind in
Finland
Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
. The delay may cost €700 million. Following the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which r ...
in 2011, she traveled frequently to Japan and spoke out in regular television appearances in support of nuclear power.
In addition to her role at Areva, Lauvergeon was part of other political and business initiatives. In 2001, France's Minister of Science
Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg chose her to chair the "national contest of assistance the creation of companies of innovating technologies". In June 2010 Lauvergeon attended the
Bilderberg conference in
Sitges
; , ) is a town about 35 kilometres southwest of Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain, renowned worldwide for Sitges Film Festival, its film festival, Carnival, and LGBTQ culture. Located between the Garraf Massif and the Mediterranean Sea, it is know ...
, Spain.
By 2011, Lauvergeon came under fire due to cost overruns at the Areva-built
Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant
The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant (, ) is one of Finland's two nuclear power plants, the other being the two-unit Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant. The plant is owned and operated by Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), and is located on Olkiluoto Island, on th ...
and the loss of a $40 billion contract in Abu Dhabi to a South Korean consortium. On 16 June 2011
Prime Minister
A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
François Fillon announced that her mandate as head of Areva, terminating end of June 2011, would not be renewed. She was replaced by
Luc Oursel, member of the Areva board of management since 2007.
Since leaving Areva, Lauvergeon has been a partner and managing director of Efficiency Capital, an investment firm that focuses on energy, technologies, and natural resources. She is also chairman and CEO of A.L.P. SAS, an advisory company. By 2016, media reported that
President François Hollande
François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...
had proposed Lauvergeon to take over as chair of the board at
EADS
Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate defence and space and helicopter divisions. Airbus has long been th ...
and had won the backing of
Chancellor
Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...
Angela Merkel of Germany for her candidature.
Controversies
On 16 October 2009 Lauvergeon addressed journalists outside the "Women’s Forum" organised in
Deauville
Deauville () is a communes of France, commune in the Calvados (department), Calvados department, Normandy (administrative region), Normandy, northwestern France. Major attractions include its port, harbour, Race track, race course, marinas, con ...
. She declared: "To be clear, with same competences, sorry, we will choose the woman or something else rather than the white male." She said these words during the
France 2
France 2 () is a French free-to-air public television channel. The flagship channel of France Télévisions, it broadcasts generalist programming including news, entertainment (such as dramas, films, and game shows), factual programmes, and sp ...
evening news. This statement generated reaction and was chosen as an example by
Éric Zemmour and
Marine Le Pen
Marion Anne Perrine "Marine" Le Pen (; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician of the far-right National Rally, National Rally party (RN). She served as the party's president from 2011 to 2021, and ran for the French presidency in ...
to explain that
positive discrimination was a kind of racism.
In 2011, Lauvergeon filed a legal complaint after she discovered a confidential report by private investigators on her husband Olivier Fric's business activities. By 2012, she asked a French court to appoint an expert to examine the circumstances under which Areva ordered a probe in 2010 into the 2007 purchase of Canadian uranium mining firm UraMin; the request was subsequently denied. An internal audit into the deal did not reveal fraud, but said that presentations made to state holding company
APE and to Areva's board about the planned UraMin acquisition had not given enough prominence to the doubts that the internal technical teams had expressed.
Areva initially withheld Lauvergeon's 1.5 million euro ($2 million) severance pay due to the UraMin dispute. Also in 2012, a court ordered the company to sign a contract allowing Lauvergeon to receive her severance pay.
Only 11 days before the first round of the
2012 French presidential election
Presidential elections in France, Presidential elections were held in France on 22 April 2012 (or 21 April in some overseas departments and territories), with a second round Two-round system, run-off held on 6 May (or 5 May for those same territ ...
, Lauvergeon accused Sarkozy in an interview with French weekly ''
L'Express
(, stylized in all caps) is a French weekly news magazine headquartered in Paris. The weekly stands at the political centre-right in the French media landscape, and has a lifestyle supplement, ''L'Express Styles'', and a job supplement, ''R� ...
'' of having tried to sell an atomic reactor to Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (20 October 2011) was a Libyan military officer, revolutionary, politician and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until Killing of Muammar Gaddafi, his assassination by Libyan Anti-Gaddafi ...
until mid-2010. In the interview, Lauvergeon also said Sarkozy had offered her a cabinet seat when he was elected in 2007 but she had refused. Sarkozy's spokeswoman
Valérie Pécresse
Valérie Anne Émilie Pécresse (; Birth name, née Roux ; 14 July 1967) is a French politician who has been the President of the Regional Council (France), President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France since 2015. A member of The Republic ...
responded by accusing Lauvergeon of trying to "settle scores", calling her statements as "fictitious". At the time, Lauvergeon was tipped as a possible minister in a Socialist government under
François Hollande
François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...
.
In 2016, Lauvergeon was put under formal investigation for her role in the UraMin acquisition,
[Simon Carraud (13 May 2016)]
Former Areva CEO Lauvergeon is put under formal investigation
''Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency ...
''. over questions on whether she deliberately submitted misleading annual accounts that concealed huge writedowns on its €1.8 billion investment in UraMin. Also, French judicial authorities investigated Fric for
insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider informati ...
and
money laundering
Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...
over the UraMin purchase.
Personal life
Lauvergeon is married to business consultant Olivier Fric.
[
]
Other activities
Corporate boards
* IB2, chair of the Board (since 2019)
* Koç Holding, Member of the Board of Directors (since 2016)
* Avril Group, Member of the Board of Directors
* Sigfox, chairman of the Board of Directors (since 2014)
* Suez
Suez (, , , ) is a Port#Seaport, seaport city with a population of about 800,000 in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It is the capital and largest c ...
, Independent Member of the Board of Directors (since 2014)
* American Express
American Express Company or Amex is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation that specializes in payment card industry, payment cards. It is headquartered at 200 Vesey Street, also known as American Expr ...
, Member of the Board of Directors (2013–2021)
* Rio Tinto, Member of the Board of Directors (2014–2017)
* Airbus
Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...
, Member of the Board of Directors (2013-2016)
* Total S.A., Member of the Board of Directors (−2015)
* ''Libération
(), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968 in France, May 1968. Initially positioned on the far left of Fr ...
'', Member of the Board of Directors (2011–2014)
* Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...
, Non-Executive Member of the Board of Directors (2005–2014)
* Safran, Member of the Board of Directors (2001–2009)
Non-profit organizations
* École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nancy, President of the Board of Directors
* Trilateral Commission, Member of the European Group
* Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Member of the Advisory Board
* International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), Member of the Advisory Board
Recognition
In French media, Lauvergeon was often cited as one of the world's most powerful women during her time at Areva. The 2006 Fortune Global 500, published by the American magazine '' Fortune'', ranked her as the 2nd most powerful woman in Europe, behind Patricia Russo, future president of Alcatel-Lucent Technologies. Also in 2006 she was ranked by ''Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...
'' magazine as the eighth-most powerful woman in the world and was ranked ninth-most powerful women in 2008 and 2009. In 2007, she was named Europe's top businesswoman in the ''Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
'' annual ranking.
In July 2011 Lauvergeon was elected an International Fellow by the Royal Academy of Engineering
The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering.
The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...
in the UK.
See also
* UraMin
* Areva
Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through t ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lauvergeon, Anne
1959 births
Living people
People from Dijon
French women chief executives
20th-century French businesswomen
20th-century French businesspeople
Lycée Lakanal alumni
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Mines Paris - PSL alumni
Corps des mines
21st-century French women politicians
Areva people
Vodafone people
French corporate directors
Officers of the Legion of Honour
Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
Female fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
21st-century women engineers
21st-century French businesswomen
21st-century French businesspeople