Bouygues

Founded in 1952 by Francis Bouygues (pronounced “bweeg”) and run by his son Martin since 1989, Bouygues is a Parisian industrial holding company with two main focuses: construction and telecommunications. One of the largest construction contractors in the world, its over 113,000 employees are employed in 80 countries.

Though Martin oversaw much of the company's diversification, Francis set the ball in motion. “I have no colleagues,” he was often quoted as saying, “only competitors.” Those competitors called him Monsieur Breton: Mr. Concrete. Mr. Concrete pursued government contracts to build France's roads and motorways, its postwar suburbs, all the while eschewing interactions with the press and his own public relations department.

After his retirement as CEO, Francis stayed involved with the company's motion picture interests, which developed in accordance with his plan to make French cinema more international. Among the movies produced by Bouygues' CiBy subsidiary are Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Little Buddha, and The Piano, an Oscar-winning commercial success that helped restimulate American interest in the Cannes Film Festival where it first attracted buzz. Francis was also responsible for the acquisition of TF1, the French television network, when it was privatized in 1987; under Bouygues ownership, the network became prosperous, and its nightly news program the most important television program in France.

Martin took control of the company in 1989, having dropped out of the University of Paris in 1974 to work on one of his father's construction sites. Within a few years he was overseeing the construction of the Parisian Les Halles shopping complex, and in 1978 oversaw Maison Bouygues, a Bouygues residential construction subsidiary. Just before Martin became CEO, Bouygues acquired the Screg Group, a holding [Page 174]company that included the highway contracting giant Colas, and began building the Channel Tunnel beneath the English Channel. This was the last major project begun under Francis, who remained on the board until his death in 1993; the Tunnel was completed the following year.

Under Martin, in 1993, the company moved into telecommunications. While acquisitions and ventures in the past had involved what was nominally a construction company in movie financing, flour milling, and frozen foods, the creation of the Bouygues Telecom subsidiary was the first major venture outside the company's wheelhouse. But the company's infrastructure experience and the timing of the move resulted in success; mobile telephony was offered through a joint venture with Telecom Italia, gaining over one million customers in less than two years.

In 2001 Bouygues Telecom was the only cellular service provider in Europe not offering 3G (third-generation) wireless service, because of the licensing fees imposed by the French government; revenues and subscriptions were seemingly unaffected by the decision. Further, Martin Bouygues' comments that such fees would be detrimental to the industry, and that the companies in other countries electing to pay them would face financial consequences for implementing such artificially expensive technology, may have proven prescient, as other companies found themselves struggling with debt. 3G service was eventually added in 2002, when the French government cut their fee from a total of $4.4 billion to $557 million—about an eighth of the original asking price.

...