Familiar Faces

Realism overcomes ideology

You could almost hear the sigh of relief here," said a top executive of France's Rhone-Poulenc chemical and fiber conglomerate. Applauded the conservative Paris daily Le Figaro: "It seems that realism has finally overcome ideology." Even Pierre Charpy, a spokesman for the opposition Rally for the Republic Party, conceded that the long-dreaded move by the Socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand was "not a scandal."

All that exhaling followed the government's formal takeover last week of Rhone-Poulenc and four other industrial groups, with total 1980 sales of $46 billion, plus 23 banking and financial institutions, and the appointment of 27 men and one woman to head the nationalized firms. Yet those captains of socialist industry looked much like their capitalist predecessors. In fact, at two firms, they were the very same faces, and at most of the others they might as well have been.

Dispelling fears that it would plop a band of radical political commissars into the directors' chairs, the Mitterrand team recruited instead an impressive list of experienced economists, bankers and industrialists. The news was so reassuring to the country's jittery business and financial Establishment that stock values on the Paris Bourse rose by a full percentage point following the announcement.

Among the nationalized firms' chief executives:

> Alain Gomez, 43, a graduate of the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration (E.N.A.) and onetime Harvard Business School student, who will lead Thomson-Brandt, an electronics and home appliance firm. A founder of the Socialist Party's vocal left wing, Gomez is probably the most ideological of the appointees. But his training and twelve years' experience as an executive at the newly nationalized Saint-Gobain-Pont-a-Mousson, a diversified glassmaker, give him impeccable business credentials.

> Jean-Pierre Brunet, 62, a respected economist and former ambassador to Japan and West Germany, who will head the electronics giant Compagnie Generale d'Electricite.

> Michel de Boissieu, 64, an E.N.A. graduate and a veteran government official, who will take over as head of the Banque Rothschild, where he served as an executive for 19 years.

> Jean Gandois, 51, who will retain his job as president of Rhone-Poulenc. An experienced industrialist and champion of free enterprise, Gandois had been singled out by France's powerful labor unions as a prime target for sacking because of his job-threatening efforts to phase out unproductive textile plants. That Mitterrand kept Gandois is a clear sign that the unions will not have a free hand in running what some pundits are starting to call "France, Inc."

Nor did the government seem eager to impose its own rule over the newly nationalized enterprises. As Mitterrand himself said last week, "These firms and banks should not be appendices of the government. Their autonomy to make decisions and act must be total." The state's role, explained Industry Secretary Pierre Dreyfus, is "to operate as a catalyst for industry, to spur investment and innovation, to oversee the trend of industrial evolution for France."

Mitterrand's strategy calls for the state-owned firms to act as "locomotives" to pull the French economy out of the worldwide recession. Nationalizing the 28 firms raises the government-owned share of French industry from 18% to 32% and presumably makes key sectors of the economy more easily controllable. But aside from transferring an additional 900,000 workers to the government payroll and costing taxpayers an estimated $8 billion in compensation to private shareholders over the next 15 years, the precise workings of nationalization remain shrouded in locomotive exhaust. A government task force has produced a vague "letter of mission," which was given last week to each new company boss. Among other things, the letter calls for efforts to increase employment, encourage investment and compete in both the domestic and the international marketplace.

A more detailed program should emerge within the next few months, when the new titans of socialized industry submit their four-year plans to the government. But in the wake of last week's reassuring appointments, few analysts expect any radical departures. Says Jacques Drossaert, a Paris-based vice president of Merrill Lynch International: "Many of the companies nationalized in the past were run just like private companies. To make a profit, they had to be. There won't be that much change this time either."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.