Ln June 14, 2012, a national tribute was paid at the Invalides to one of the most important men of post-war French capitalism. Antoine Bernheim had just passed away at the age of 87. He had, during his long career at the Lazard bank, helped many young guns to seize power in a French capitalism plagued by family quarrels and controlled from afar by the big local banks. He was one of the essential cogs in this transformation, from the bank to the stock market. An unparalleled artist of capitalism without capital, supporting Bernard Arnault in his conquest of the LVMH group, or François Pinault. But his favorite will remain Vincent Bolloré until the end.
A high school friend of his father, he will be the linchpin of the young man’s rise. But the latter had more nerve than equity. So, Bernheim invented for him ever more sophisticated assemblies that the entrepreneur would call “Breton pulleys”. A cascade of holding companies which follow one another and of which only the majority of the capital is controlled, the rest being held by financial minorities.
With five or six such floors, it is possible to master a multi-billion dollar business with a few percent of capital and tens of millions invested. Indispensable, when you start life with a fragile SME in the depths of Brittany. He also taught him how to use the Stock Exchange in the same way, helping him to introduce Bolloré Technologies there in 1985. Always using minority shareholders to take or keep control, without paying the real price.
Fragile heirs
He will also teach buccaneers with an insatiable appetite to take an interest in genealogy and fragile heirs. In his recent book, Bolloré, the man who worries (L’Observatoire, 219 pages, 20 euros), the journalist Vincent Beaufils recounts that, during the assault on the Delmas-Vieljeux maritime empire, the family’s genealogical tree did not leave his office, and how he managed to bring down one by one the scattered heirs of this old Protestant line.
He will consistently apply this recipe in his stock market raids, whether successful or unsuccessful, on Lazard, Bouygues, Vivendi, Ubisoft, Telecom Italia, Lagardère… with this concern for minimal capital investment and the idea that in the event of failure , it will derive at least a nice added value, as in the case of Bouygues.
The fashion is no longer for the accumulation of holding companies, which do not protect shareholders from quarrels, but rather for pure and simple control, or even withdrawal from the Stock Exchange.
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