Guillaume Sarkozy
| Guillaume Sarkozy | |
|---|---|
| Born | 18 June 1951 Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Education | Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau; Lycée Janson-de-Sailly; École spéciale des travaux publics (ESTP), Paris |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur; company executive |
| Employer | Tissage de Picardie; Malakoff Médéric |
| Title | Former president and chief executive, Tissage de Picardie; former délégué général, Malakoff Médéric |
| Known for | Rebuilding Tissage de Picardie; brokering the Malakoff and Médéric merger; vice-presidency of MEDEF |
Guillaume Georges Didier Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, known as Guillaume Sarkozy, born 18 June 1951 in Paris, is a French entrepreneur who spent more than two decades as president and chief executive of the textile manufacturer Tissage de Picardie before going on to lead the mutual insurance group Malakoff Médéric as its délégué général. He also held senior office within France's main employers' organisations, serving as vice-president of MEDEF and as president of the Union des industries textiles (UIT).
He is the elder brother of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and has a half-brother, Olivier Sarkozy.
Early life and education
Sarkozy is the son of Pál Sarkozy (1928 to 2023), an advertising executive and painter, and Andrée Mallah (1925 to 2017), a lawyer. He was educated at the private Catholic school Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau and then at the public Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, both in Paris, before earning an engineering degree from the École spéciale des travaux publics (ESTP) in Paris.
He married Sylvie Vever, with whom he had three children: Frédéric (born 1980), Clémentine (born 1983) and Capucine (born 1986). He remarried in March 2004, to Christine Mulot.
Career
Early career, 1974 to 1979
From 1974 to 1976, Sarkozy worked on assignment at the Directorate of Public Safety (direction de la sécurité civile) within the French Ministry of the Interior. He then joined IBM France, where he worked as a sales engineer until 1979.
Tissage de Picardie, 1979 to 2006
In 1979, Sarkozy became chief operating officer of the upholstery fabric manufacturer Tissage de Picardie, based in the Somme département, taking over from his father in law; he became its president and chief executive in 1981. He went on to lead Tissage Rinet from 1985 and Velveterie from 1990, merging both into Tissage de Picardie, and he later bought the company outright from his first wife's family. Under his leadership, Tissage de Picardie grew from around 40 employees in 1979 to roughly 100 by the early 2000s and became one of the world's leading makers of upholstery fabric, exporting about 65 per cent of its production.
The textile sector's difficulties caught up with the company by the mid 2000s. France's textile industry lost half its workforce between 2000 and 2005, and Tissage de Picardie's largest client filed for bankruptcy in 2003, cutting sharply into orders. At the end of 2004, Sarkozy cut 15 jobs and raised 300,000 euros in new capital in an attempt to save the business, but the workforce had already halved since the start of that year. In September 2005, after 27 years running Tissage de Picardie, Sarkozy filed the company for bankruptcy protection following the loss of its two largest clients. In March 2006, after several months under court supervised receivership, he sold Tissage de Picardie to the industrialist René de Gaillande.
Groupe Médéric and Malakoff Médéric, 2005 to 2015
Between 2005 and 2006, Sarkozy was president of Groupe Résalliance Conseil. From 2006 he became délégué général of Groupe Médéric, and in July 2008 he took the same role at Malakoff Médéric, the non profit, joint labour management mutual insurance group formed that year by the merger of Malakoff and Médéric; Sarkozy was described as the initiator and architect of the merger. He was appointed to the role unanimously, chosen in equal part by employer organisations and by five major trade unions. Malakoff Médéric specialised in supplementary insurance, including the Agirc-Arrco pension scheme, health cover, provident insurance and retirement savings. Under his leadership the group won contracts to insure the hotel, café and restaurant sector, the Sécurité sociale and Pôle emploi, in addition to its existing role insuring the Assedic and Unedic unemployment funds.
In October 2010, the Communist deputy André Guérin opposed a proposed partnership between Malakoff Médéric and CNP Assurances, France's largest personal insurer and a subsidiary of the Caisse des dépôts et consignations; the plan was rejected by the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel, and by the end of 2010 the two groups had shelved a proposed joint retirement and savings subsidiary because of technical and regulatory difficulties. In 2011, Malakoff Médéric and Europ Assistance created a joint subsidiary, BEA; Sarkozy said the venture would, according to the group, "support the development of new solutions in health and personal services, a vector of solidarity and job creation." Sarkozy had also been a partner of the Fédération française handisport since 2009 at his own initiative, and in 2012 Malakoff Médéric mobilised in support of disability sport around the London Paralympics, by which point 6.2 per cent of the group's own employees were disabled.
In November 2015, Malakoff Médéric's governing board began negotiating the terms of Sarkozy's departure amid a disagreement with Patrick Sagon, president of Mutuelle Générale, with which Malakoff Médéric had begun merger talks. A spokesman for the group said no dismissal procedure was under way and that Malakoff Médéric remained, in the group's words, "totally mobilised" for the merger with Mutuelle Générale to succeed.
Employers' federation roles
Alongside his corporate career, Sarkozy held office within France's main employers' organisations. From 1993 to 2006 he served in the Union des industries textiles (UIT), as first vice-president in charge of social affairs from 1994 to 2000 and then as president until May 2006, when he was succeeded by Lucien Deveaux. As UIT president, Sarkozy was reported to have said he was proud to be an industrial boss who relocates jobs abroad; he denied making the remark, saying he had never relocated a single job while running Tissage de Picardie.
At the CNPF, later renamed MEDEF, Sarkozy chaired the Committee on Social Welfare (commission de la protection sociale) from 1994 to 1998. At MEDEF he went on to chair the Commission sociale and the Union des Textiles before being named vice-president in 2004, with responsibility for social welfare reform; he served on MEDEF's executive council and finance committee from 2000 to 2006 and led the organisation's side of government negotiations on pension and health system reform. In a bid for the MEDEF presidency, Sarkozy stood alongside Francis Mer, but the pair withdrew after failing to win sufficient support.
Sarkozy also served as a director of Scor SE; as a member of the Haut Conseil pour l'avenir de l'assurance maladie from 2004; as a director of the CNAV from 1994 to 1998; as vice-president of the CNAM from 2004 to 2005; as a member of the Conseil économique et social from 2004 to 2006; and as a former member of the Conseil d'orientation des retraites.
He was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 31 December 2001.
Assessment
Sarkozy is credited with growing Tissage de Picardie into one of the world's leading upholstery fabric manufacturers over more than two decades of leadership. Its 2005 bankruptcy followed the loss of its two largest clients and a broader collapse in the French textile sector, rather than any specific failure the sources attribute directly to him; the company had already cut its workforce and raised new capital in an attempt to survive before that loss forced the filing.
His initiation of the Malakoff and Médéric merger, and his unanimous appointment to lead the combined group by both employer and union representatives, point to a reputation for consensus building across France's labour relations divide. His departure from Malakoff Médéric was negotiated in 2015 amid a disagreement with a merger partner's president, and, separately, he denied a widely reported remark attributed to him about relocating jobs abroad while he led the UIT.