Patrick Kron (born 26 September 1953) was the chairman and chief executive (Président-directeur général) of the French engineering conglomerate
Alstom
Alstom SA is a French multinational rolling stock manufacturer operating worldwide in rail transport markets, active in the fields of passenger transportation, signalling, and locomotives, with products including the AGV, TGV, Eurostar, Avelia ...
. Alstom is most well known for its
Eurostar
Eurostar is an international high-speed rail service connecting the United Kingdom with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Most Eurostar trains travel through the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France, owned and operated sep ...
and
TGV
The TGV (french: Train à Grande Vitesse, "high-speed train"; previously french: TurboTrain à Grande Vitesse, label=none) is France's intercity high-speed rail service, operated by SNCF. SNCF worked on a high-speed rail network from 1966 to 19 ...
trains, and is headquartered at
Levallois-Perret
Levallois-Perret () is a commune in the Hauts-de-Seine department and Île-de-France region of north-central France. It lies some from the centre of Paris in the north-western suburbs of the French capital. It is the most densely populated ...
.
Early life
Kron is the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants who survived the
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
and detention at the end of the 1940s, when they moved to France. Patrick Kron started his education after high school at
Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour
The Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour is a school in Paris, France, on avenue Trudaine.
History
The school was founded as the private Collège Sainte-Barbe in 1821 and renamed Collège Rollin in 1830. It was transplanted in 1876 from the Quartier ...
as a young boy at the elite university
École Polytechnique
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
He started his career at the French Ministry of Industry ( Minister of the Economy, Finances and Industry, the Ministère de l'Économie, des Finances et du Commerce extérieur), where he worked from 1979 to 1984. From 1979 to 1983 he was stationed at the Direction régionale de l'Industrie, de la Recherche et de l'Environnement (DRIRE) in the
Pays de la Loire
Pays de la Loire (; ; br, Broioù al Liger) is one of the 18 regions of France, in the west of the mainland. It was created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital, Nantes, one of a handful of "balancing metropolises" ().
...
.
From 1984 to 1997 he worked for
Pechiney
Pechiney SA was a major aluminium conglomerate based in France. The company was acquired in 2003 by the Alcan Corporation, headquartered in Canada. In 2007, Alcan itself was taken over by mining giant Rio Tinto Alcan.
Prior to its acquisition, ...
, becoming president of the Electrometallurgy Division, and later chairman of the board of the
Carbone Lorraine
Mersen, previously called Carbone Lorraine, is a French international company in electrical power and advanced materials. In 1937, the company was admitted to Bourse de Paris.
History
Mersen, previously named Carbone Lorraine (until May 20, 2 ...
Company from 1993 to 1997.
He became chief executive of Alstom on 1 January 2003. He became chairman of Alstom on 11 March 2003.
While under Kron’s leadership, Alstom was investigated by the United States Department of Justice and ultimately agreed to pay a $772 million fine. Some mid-level Alstom executives were arrested in America, and then either enrolled as FBI informants in the company, or jailed as part of that investigation, such as
Frédéric Pierucci
Frédéric Pierucci, (born 14 January 1968), is a former senior manager for Alstom, accused of corruption by the United States government in 2014. He was arrested and detained in United States, where he was held as an economic hostage.
His story ...
. This forced Kron to warn his other executives not to travel to America to avoid such fate. In 2015, General Electric acquired Alstom’s power generation and transmission businesses; following the completion of that transaction, Kron retired as Alstom’s CEO.
The transaction was heavily criticized in France, as many in the
French government
The Government of France ( French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who ...
considered the assets that were sold as strategic. France had initially blocked General Electric's acquisition of Alstom. But after
Arnaud Montebourg
Arnaud Montebourg (; born 30 October 1962) is a French politician, lawyer and entrepreneur who served as the Minister of Industrial Renewal from 2012 to 2014,Minister of the Economy and Finance, he was replaced by
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France since 2017. ''Ex officio'', he is also one of the two Co-Princes of Andorra. Prior to his presidency, Macron served as Minister of Econ ...
, who relented and approved the sale. Pierucci was released on bail during the same week of the purchase.
The affair is frequently presented in France as an example of
hostage diplomacy
Hostage diplomacy, also hostage-diplomacy, is the taking of hostages for diplomatic purposes.
Background and overview
The custom of taking hostages was an integral part of foreign relations in the ancient world. This long history of political an ...
and
economic warfare
Economic warfare or economic war is an economic strategy utilized by belligerent nations with the goal of weakening the economy of other states. This is primarily achieved by the use of economic blockades. Ravaging the crops of the enemy is a cl ...
by the United States government to favor large companies in commercial transactions. Indeed, the deal included the stipulation that General Electric would bare the responsibility for Alstom's judicial troubles in American, but the DoJ fined the remaining French leftover of Alstom anyway in December that year. Kron maintains that the controversial transaction was done for purely commercial reasons. As evidence, Kron points to General Electric's share price drop following the acquisition of Alstom's unprofitable assets, while Alstom recorded higher profits since the transaction.
In 2016, he started the international consulting firm PKC&I, and became Chairman of Truffle Capital, a venture capital firm focused on BioMedTech and FinTech & InsureTech. He also sits on the Board of Directors of listed companies (Sanofi, LafargeHolcim) and of a non-listed company (SEGULA Technologies). Since June 2019, he is Chairman of the Board of Directors at
Imerys
Imerys S.A. is a French multinational company which specialises in the production and processing of industrial minerals. It is headquartered in Paris and is a constituent of the CAC Mid 60 index.
Imerys has operations in over 40 countries and ...
.
Honours
He was awarded the Légion d’honneur (
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...
) on 30 September 2004 and became an Officer of National Order of Merit (
Ordre national du Mérite
The Ordre national du Mérite (; en, National Order of Merit) is a French order of merit with membership awarded by the President of the French Republic, founded on 3 December 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle. The reason for the order's esta ...