The message is one of trust and, even, of exhortation: “French women are excellent businesswomen but are often too cautious. We are here to tell him: you can do twice as much". Nicolas Dufourcq, CEO of Bpi-Group now become Bpifrance, the Banque Publique d'investissements born on 1 January 2013 and strongly desired by François Hollande to relaunch competitiveness, create jobs and boost innovation especially in SMEs, is a model that many in Italy would like to imitate. First of all the president and CEO of the Italian Cassa depositi e prestiti, Claudio Costamagna and Fabio Gallia. But we are in Italy and not in France where the reorganization on the public intervention instrument, from which it was born Bpifrance which in a bank contains three (loans, export insurance and shareholdings) and is a veritable financial colossus, was launched with a law dated 31 December 2012. The issue is not in the Gentiloni government's programs even if it could give good results here too. And not even in Nicolas Dufourcq's agenda that FIRST online meets at Villa Medici on the occasion of Women's Forum Rome 2017 to which he brought his contribution on the theme of "the value of prosperity for shared growth".
“We are in fact a private bank – explains the manager who at the end of June also became president of STM taking over from Maurizio Tamagnini of FSI – despite being 50% owned by the state and 50% by the Caisse des dépôts (Cdc). . We act with market logic. We have 2.500 employees and 50 regional agencies and function as a one-stop shop for businesses."
How do you accompany French SMEs?
“I'll give you some figures. We disburse 15 billion a year in loans and around 10 billion in the form of guarantees to French banks. In addition, we finance innovation projects with 1,6 billion a year and direct capital investments with 2,5 billion. The other "leg" of our business is export credit, the equivalent of your Sace, to which we allocate around 16 billion a year. All in one integrated organization. As I said, innovation is only a part of our business and is mainly aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises, with the exception of some important projects for which it is possible to extend our intervention to large enterprises as well. We are the French Sovereign Fund and one of our latest interventions on big industry involved the entry with 12% of the capital of Peugeot. We also invest indirectly in companies as funds of funds and we have over 300 national or regional private individuals. We finance quite a few projects by French companies in Italy, a country with which we have excellent relations".
Cohabitation in Stm is a demonstration of this. But let's go back to women entrepreneurs: you said they should be encouraged, why? Are they too fearful, cautious?
"It's not about courage but rather about confidence in their own abilities: they have to start telling themselves that they are absolutely capable of growing in size and creating a great company."
Here in Rome we discussed the climate and support for the Paris Agreements. Bpi is also involved in this sector: but how does this commitment translate into a country that produces 85% of its electricity with nuclear power plants?
“We support solar, wind and methane energy projects. France has decided to invest massively in these sectors and we finance the implementation of the projects by accompanying the energy transition towards renewables".
