Total, Renault, Sanofi... the star index of the Paris Stock Exchange, the CAC 40, groups together the heavyweights of the French economy but makes little room for the new technologies sector.
The Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron, underlined this himself in a recent interview with the specialist press, recalling that ". the average age of CAC 40 companies is 105 years, while the average age of Nasdaq companies in the United States is 15 years"
Chile the CAC 40 is a diversified index and the Nasdaq is by definition a predominantly technological index, these comments nonetheless reflect questions about the lack of renewal on the Paris stock exchange. This debate is not new, since in early 2012 Xavier Niel, the head of Iliad, the parent company of the operator Free, already stressed that the absence of new technology companies in the CAC 40 was "a major obstacle to the renewal of the Paris stock market". a real problem"
It is not the Euronext stock market operator itself that decides on entries and exits within the CAC 40, but a Scientific Index Council, made up of several prominent figures, which meets with the utmost discretion four times a year. In order to join the Paris financial market's holy of holies, candidates must meet criteria based on the size of their free float (proportion of shares exchangeable on the stock market) and liquidity (volume of shares traded). As a result, the club is tightly knit around 40 companies with capitalizations ranging from €6 billion (Technip) to €105 billion (Total).
The CAC 40 remains dominated by industrial and financial stocks, even though the Index Council did not hesitate to oust EDF at the end of 2015.
"Glass Ceiling"
" We have a pool of very innovative and dynamic young companies, but we are not able to keep them under the French flag because we cannot provide them with the capital they need to grow."Emmanuel Macron, in an interview with the Federation of Individual Investors and Investment Clubs (F2IC).
Startups" do not have sufficient size or liquidity" to join the CAC 40, "and this is normal, it is part of their development cycle« says Anthony Attia, CEO of Euronext Paris, adding that the stock exchange operator has created "...a new company that will be able to offer its clients a wide range of products and services. other clues with other rules to give them visibility"
According to Franck Sebag, a partner at the EY consulting firm, interviewed by AFP, "... the new company is a great success. it's not so much a middle-aged problem... "of the index," that a problem with the emergence of new high-value companies" . " Why isn't France able to create new leaders? That's the point« he says.
READ UP : Why don't French startups become giants?
Thus in the United States, " the big clubs have emerged in about ten, twenty years or so, the country has managed to build real international champions.« Laurent Allias, founder of the Josiane advertising agency and of the Cercle des jeunes entreprises (CJE).
The United States has indeed given birth to new generations of companies with dazzling success, the most famous of which are those designated by the famous acronyms GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) and NATU (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla, Uber).
While France can still boast of the appearance of a few Licornes (companies valued at over a billion dollars), in particular the emblematic BlaBlaCar or Vente-Privée, it still faces a "... ". glass ceiling« Judge Laurent Allias.
Withings, SeLoger.com, Meetic and PriceMinister, former jewels of French new technologies, have all ended up in the hands of international groups," says Franck Sebag. Among the obstacles to the ambitions of French startups, a national ecosystem". less developed than in the United States« He also raised the issue of funding.
READ UP : "The French startup ecosystem is a second division championship."
In 2015, 66 billion dollars were invested in startups in the United States, compared to only 2 billion in France," observes Mr Sebag.
Laurent Allias points his finger at fiscal and political issues, but above all " an education system that is not sufficiently professionalizing "which does little to encourage young people to start their own businesses.
