This June 17, 2019, a motley crowd crowds into the gardens of the Hôtel de Cassini, in the heart of the ministerial district, in Paris. We see ministers there, such as Gérald Darmanin and the former Secretary of State for Ecological Transition Brune Poirson; the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; the former minister and deputy François Baroin; the writer Jacques Attali; the CEO of the Barrière casino group, Dominique Desseigne; the former Miss France Sylvie Tellier, and… Nicolas Sarkozy, who came that day as a guest star to present the National Order of Merit to David Layani, founder of the digital services company Onepoint.
Decorated by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, his friend since 2017, David Layani insisted that it was the former President of the Republic who presented him with the blue ribbon. The two men were presented in 2012 by Salima Saa, a young Sarkozy activist involved in the campaign team during the presidential election. The atypical profile of this boss who left high school after 1D and who seems to be afraid of nothing could only please Nicolas Sarkozy. “Here is a young person who has ambition”declared the former president in front of the 500 guests.
David Layani does not have ambition, he is overflowing with ambition. Born in Paris in 1979, he created Onepoint at the age of 22, after sales experience in the American IT company EMC. Twenty years later, with just over 3,300 employees, his company is in the top 10 French digital services. But that is not enough for him. This cheeky entrepreneur decided to buy Eviden, the digital services activity of the number two French IT company, Atos. He acquired 9.9% of the capital at the beginning of November, thus inviting himself to the negotiating table alongside Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky, for his part interested in Tech Foundations, the other half of Atos. . A brilliant revenge for the one who had been abruptly sent back to play in his backyard, a year ago, by the management of the IT group because it was considered too small.
A dozen acquisitions
Onepoint achieves ten times less turnover than Eviden (500 million euros, compared to 5 billion), but David Layani does not see the impossible. He has already made a dozen acquisitions and, at the beginning of November, he obtained the support of the American fund Carlyle, ready to lend him 500 million euros for the adventure. David Layani, who relies on the best bankers and business lawyers, has also shown that he is starting to count in Parisian capitalism. His influence with Alexandre Barrière during the putsch orchestrated against his father Dominique Desseigne in April served as a trial by fire.
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