THEhe annual report (June 2020-June 2021) of the State Participation Agency (APE), published Tuesday, October 26, opens with an unreserved satisfaction from Bruno Le Maire: through his action from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government has saved companies, placed industrial sectors under an infusion of public money and allowed the resumption of their activity, writes in substance the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Recovery.
To hell with modesty! But it would take bad faith to dispute the speed with which it responded to the unprecedented crisis of spring 2020. The agency’s rather leisurely pace of life was upset, as were its priorities of managing a portfolio of 83 companies in which the State holds all or part of the capital. A heritage of 125 billion euros, which recovered after falling to 84 billion in June 2020.
The value of the eleven listed companies alone, which fell to 52.3 billion following the collapse of the markets at the start of the pandemic, rose to 73.6 billion (as of October 22). The APE welcomes the “Exceptional performance” of this portfolio between June 2020 and June 2021 (+ 34.4%), slightly higher than that of the CAC 40, the flagship index of the Paris market.
Emergency interventions
The State has mobilized capital (guaranteed loans, capital increases, subscription to bond issues, etc.) to support – or even save – strategic companies or essential public services (SNCF, EDF, Air France-KLM, Renault, Airbus…). For its part, the APE was endowed with 20 billion euros from the spring of 2020, of which more than 8 billion were spent for Air France-KLM, SNCF Réseau and three sector funds (aeronautics, automotive, nuclear).
These emergency interventions are consistent with the agency’s doctrine, redefined in 2017: focusing efforts on companies where France’s sovereignty is at stake (defense and nuclear), those which are essential to the proper functioning of the economy (transport, energy, etc.) and those whose bankruptcy would have disastrous chain effects on the entire economy. But this new strategy also involved the privatization of part of the State’s assets – welcome to bail out the public accounts.
These disposals have stalled since the marketing of 52% of la Française des jeux at the end of 2019. Even before the health crisis, the government had suspended the two planned operations: Paris Airport, of which the twenty platforms did not. regained only 39% of their 2019 activity; and Engie, in the process of restructuring its activities. The state has come back in force. He will remain a key shareholder (28.6%) of Air France-KLM and must even take over 100% of EDF’s nuclear activity.