A French Bank Like No Other in Europe Seeks to Export Its Model
Bpifrance, a for-profit state-owned lender with a mandate to foster national champions, says it’s making intervention in the private sector work. Is it?
Bpifrance headquarters in the Maisons-Alfort suburb of Paris on Aug. 15.
Photographer: Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg
Bpifrance is a bank like no other in Europe.
The French lender has made more than €50 billion ($56 billion) in loans to small and mid-sized businesses and has €52 billion in stakes in almost 1,000 companies. It has backed everything from a startup wanting to take tourists to the edge of space in balloons and a chain of trendy Parisian nightspots to the automotive giant Stellantis NV. A force to reckon with on French deals for M&A advisers like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., it has lured away bankers from firms like UBS Group AG and Rothschild & Co.