Simon Brewer 

Our exploration of the world's super allocators would be incomplete without touching down in France, a lesser-known and different but significant sovereign wealth fund. We've interviewed Nicolai Tangen at the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, but European countries have generally not developed these segregated pools of capital with longer-term investment goals, unlike many other nations. And who better to discuss France's approach than with a Knight of the Légion d'honneur, the highest French Order of Merit established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte. Therefore, Nicolas Dufourcq, General Manager at the Banque Publique d'Investissement, BPI, since its creation in 2013, welcome to the Money Maze Podcast.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

Good morning.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Well, I noted as I studied your journey that we were born 20 days apart. However, you are just my senior. So it's a great pleasure having seen and studied your career to have you here today. So welcome. Now, I read that by the time you were a student at HEC, the French Business School, you'd already created five startups. Is that true?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

It's absolutely true. At that time, we were not speaking of startups, we were speaking of SMEs. Some of them were industry-based in the food industry, in the plastics industry and so forth.

‍

Simon Brewer 

So you have this entrepreneurial flair in one sense, and you studied at the ENA. For those who don't know in our audience around the world, École nationale d'administration is no longer, but was and for such a long time regarded as the absolute pinnacle of excellence for preparing young folks for both professional work in the public and private sectors. It's obviously changed right now but we've had I think four French presidents who came through the ENA. Obviously, one of the interesting things is that you in your career path have straddled both public and private sector. As you graduated from ENA, how did you weigh up the public sector versus the private sector?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

I did a business school and then I did ENA, and at the same time I created startups. To be honest, I created five small companies at that time. Four were a failure. I was heavily indebted, and the fifth one allowed me to reimburse the debts. I always thought, I remember, that, or you are an entrepreneur or you serve your country. But in the middle, being just a high-ranking official of a private company, it was not something I thought was desirable at the time. I was very robotic. I was at the same time preparing myself to be a servant of the country and an entrepreneur. And it happened that I became a servant of the country. It didn't last very long, it lasted maximum two years, and then after, I discovered internet, then I went to France Telecom to create the internet access subsidiary which was called Wanadoo, and I stayed there 10 years.

‍

Simon Brewer 

We're going to come back to technology later on because it's so important in this whole discussion on innovation and productivity, but just pausing because many of us of a certain age absolutely remember Wanadoo and we remember France Telecom and we remember Europe's advantageous position in TMT relative to many other parts of the world. And I wondered what it was that really helped you at both Wanadoo and France Telecom in preparing you for your later stages.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

First of all, I was lucky enough to have a boss who was the CEO of France Telecom at the time, who was Michel Bon, who literally gave me the keys of the internet venture of the group. I had discovered internet in New Orleans at the NCTA forum. It was in the spring of 1993. And I came back to France and I called France Telecom and I said, this is exactly what I want to do. And it was pure entrepreneurship. I would never have been in a position to create that company, which became big. We listed it for €20 billion in July 2000. It was the last major IPO of the internet scene in Europe. If I hadn't built my own companies before, that was the continuity of experience. Then after Wanadoo, I left the telecom sector and I joined the IT sector. I was the Deputy CEO of Capgemini. And Capgemini, we bought it from 50,000 people to 150,000 people and most of the difference became linked to our settlements in India. So I had 10 years of extraordinary adventure for globalization in India.

‍

Simon Brewer 

There's a circularity here.  When I looked at some of Capgemini's materials today, they have this catchphrase which is 'unlocking the value of technology'. We'll come back to that, as I said, when we talk about productivity. But then you were approached sometime around 2012, 2013 to head up this new venture. Let's just start at the beginning because we said this is an unusual sovereign wealth fund. Just explain to us please its genesis.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

The genesis of Bpifrance is basically the industrialisation of the country after the year 2000. France, as far as industry is concerned, missed the opportunities of globalisation. There was a social mix which was not adapted to the first competition that started at that moment, and therefore, we lost half of our factories. We destroyed probably 1.7 million jobs in industry, exactly like in the US and the UK. Only those three countries deindustrialised massively. The rest of Europe, Northern Europe not to be protected itself, Italy was also reasonably competitive, but it was not the case for France. Therefore, at the end of the decade, there was the political project to create a sort of megabank to rejuvenate the French economy, and notably, the industry, and it was called BPI. There was one advisor of the French president at the time who was called Emmanuel Macron. And Emmanuel Macron called me, it was at the beginning of the month of October 2012. I didn't know anything about that project. I didn't even know the acronym of BPI. I was fully dedicated to Capgemini. But I looked at it and I remembered my sort of passion for entrepreneurship and my deep respect for French entrepreneurs, and I saw there was something to do. There was something very interesting to do. 

‍

Simon Brewer 

So that was the genesis. Just take us through the evolution.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

Of course, it was extremely politically influenced. At that time, there were lots of quarrels about what it should be. In France, we have 13 regions like the German lenders, and they wanted to capture the organisation. So in a nutshell, it was quite wild. I decided to impose a view, which is basically the bank of today, which is a very homogenous organization, fully dedicated to entrepreneurs in France, from the small one, SME, to the mega French multinationals which are listed in your next door or in Amsterdam, and this is basically what we do. Our business lines are, first of all, loans. We are selling or granting every year € 15 billion of loans, and this is the reason why we're regulated by the European Central Bank. So we are one of the major French banks. Then we have an equity business. We are managing €55 billion and we're investing in equity €5 billion per year directly through all the verticals and theses possible, and indirectly through major funds of funds activity. Funds of funds wise, we're investing €5 billion per year minimum. And then we have a third business line which is innovation financing. We are pouring in the French economy in 2023 €7 billion euros of innovation financing only in the year. So that's really massive. Now, we have a fourth business line, which is guarantee. We guarantee the French banks for the most risky loans. We allow them to do every year up to €15 billion euros of risky loans guaranteed by us. And then we have a fifth business unit which is export credit and export guarantee, EXIM Bank. We're the EXIM Bank of France. On top of that, we have become, probably is it because I spent 10 years at Capgemini, probably the biggest French structure for consulting delegated to SMEs. There was nothing in that respect before. So executive education for SME leaders and consulting for them. Of course, they cannot afford to pay Accenture or McKinsey or Capgemini, and so forth. They can't. So there was really a market failure, and we created a toolbox which is quite efficient, the consequence of it being that we are doing every year 7000 consulting assignments for the French SMEs. So all this is in a square structure. So it's not holding. You have 50 branches on the field and each branch in the smaller cities of France is embodying that toolbox, the full toolbox. So the French entrepreneur goes to the branch and opens a business dialogue, and then we sort of knit up and orchestrate a solution in which there will be a little bit of loan, a little bit of equity, a bit of consulting, and so forth. That's the way we operate. 

‍

Simon Brewer 

That's very clear. Thank you. We'll dive into a few of those. But in reading some of your materials, the comment that struck me perhaps above all else was your mission to galvanize the French economy. How do you define the mission of galvanizing an economy which, like many other European economies, has had disappointing growth and productivity?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

From the start, I acknowledged the fact that we should be a sort of cycle back. I’ll explain myself. I always thought that banking has a sort of Freudian dimension. You have to trigger the desire of the entrepreneur to do more to get the projects out of the board, and you've got to do it. The sort of you-can-do-it mentality is something that I wanted to push in France and it happens to have been quite efficient because we were a solitary voice at the beginning. You can imagine, it was in the winter of 2012, 2013, France was in deep crisis. It was really dark with a lot of connective melancholia. So when you have a bank which is yellow, like it's the case of Bpifrance, who says everything is possible, we are a California, we don't know it, but we are, and we are a startup nation, we can make it and so forth, all the American values I would say, it made a tremendous difference and it really galvanized a new generation of entrepreneurs. It told them that they could become mainstream. It was a dream at the time, but now, it's a reality. You have statistics which are flabbergasting in France. You have today 50% of the youngsters who say they want to be entrepreneurs. You will remember that at the beginning of the year 2000, you had 60% of the French young people who wanted to be civil servants. It's a complete, anthropological change.

‍

Simon Brewer 

That does surprise me because we don't associate it with, and we'll talk about innovation in the sec, we don't associate it with a lot of Europe. What's been behind that shift in youthful ambition?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

It was built on the rising wave of a new generation, social generation, of young entrepreneurs, some of them not so young, which have lived through the first wave of internet. Some of them made the first fortune with Minitel. It's the case of Sévigné, for example. And you had a burgeoning ecosystem of venture capital funds which had been patiently built after I would say 1998. So patiently under the radars during 10 years, there was the building of that ecosystem. And suddenly, we produced all the green shots of the year 2012. And there was a political trigger, which was the tax reform of François Hollande, who was considered as punitive by this new generation. And this new generation launched a riot, I would say, which was called ‘pigeons’. They said, ‘we are not the pigeons of France. You are not going to tax us as you think’. And there was a media uproar about that insurrection of entrepreneurs. They became famous, and they revealed their power in the French society. It was autumn 2012. And from that, the political conditions of the creation of what we call now the French Tech were met. It's always the same. You need economy and you need also political conditions. All that happened at the moment Bpifrance was created in December 2012.

‍

Simon Brewer 

One of the most difficult things, unlike managing a pool of capital, is defining and measuring success. How do you think about how your job is going?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

I mean, good for the French taxpayers. We're very profitable. We have posted €2 billion net result in 2021, €1.6 billion in 2022, and all this comes 90% from our equity business. Our equity business is very successful. So first off, as I told you, we invest €1.6 billion per year in funds of funds. So the performance of the underlying portfolio of the 500 funds that we finance, some of them outside of France by the way, and most of the French funds in which we invest are themselves investing outside of France up to 50%. So we have an underlying portfolio of companies, which is basically 6000 companies, which is a very good quality generating very good distributions which are shooting the result of PPI. So some funds do 1.7x, some funds do 3x, all this is a tricky market practice. And as far as our direct investments are concerned, I must say we have good performance, even if it's risky, because of course, being a public investment bank, we have a mandate to take more risky situations than the average of the market. For example, we don't do LBO mid-cap. The market doesn't need us. We do small-cap, we do venture capitals from seed to growth, we do mid-cap but not leveraged. And also, we invest in French listed multinationals. Overall, we have a performance of average value creation from the creation of the bank to today of 7% per year.

‍

Simon Brewer 

So this equity question is key. We had your countryman, Sir Xavier Rolet, on a little while ago, and he said the Achilles heel of Europe is its over-reliance of debt financing, France being a great example, and an insufficiency of the equity culture. So it seems like that's an enormous task. Now, you're hinting that there's a change sociologically in the youth. But we all know that unlike the US where raising large amounts of money for VC and PE has been relatively easy, this has been hard work in Europe. How have you grasped it?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

I think we can say it has changed. I can even state that a good project, be it a technological startup, or a classical SME, I would say, who look for equity, finds equity in France. If it doesn't find equity, it is that the project is not good. There is real abundance of equity. Where there is a need today is two new verticals. The first one is what we call industrial startups, the family of Elon Musk. If you're a pure digital company, the family of Facebook, you will find money. If you're a classical industry company, you will find money. But if you're an industrial startup, so you're building your first factory out of deep technology with a new team, so it's venture but it's industrial. This is new. We finance that massively and we are starting only now to create an ecosystem of industrial venture capital funds, which is something new for France. The second vertical in which we are not where we would like to be is the cornerstone investors in the technological listings. Remember, we don't have pension funds in France. So the pension funds in Northern Europe quite often are the cornerstone investors at the moment to IPO of the unicorns of those countries. Same in the US, by the way. But in France, we don't have pension funds. We have insurance companies, who tend not to take shares in listed companies of that kind. And therefore, we are currently striving to organise again with an ecosystem of institutional investors in France that will become with us cornerstone investors at the moment of IPOs of the 25 unicorns of the landscape.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Presumably, these insurance companies are also hindered by Solvency II regulations, which is a debate in the UK because of Brexit, to what extent they can be freed up to provide key financing. Are you frustrated by the political level, the inflexibility of the opportunity set?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

Yes, we are. Undoubtedly, we are.

‍

Simon Brewer 

One of the things you mentioned, and again, it intrigued me as I read through your papers is that you are on the one level providing finance and on the other level, you're providing guidance training consultancy, and you've got this expression, you want to be the ‘one-stop shop for entrepreneurs’. Just explain practically, how does that get done?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

We have a toolbox of consulting services which is composed of classical consulting assignments that last between three days and 15 days. We don't recruit our own consultants. We have a pool of freelancers. They are 1500, mostly seniors, which is something essential for the SME leaders and bosses because, to be honest, these people have such a tough life that they don't really like to have 28-year-old youngsters that are staffed when you buy services from big brands of consulting companies. So the freelancers were youngsters 20 years before in those big, big, big houses, and now they work for themselves and they have a lot of experience. We have 1500 of them and we push them to the French, they buffer more territories and regions, and it's very, very fruitful. The entrepreneur pays half of the price. He pays the Monday, I pay the Tuesday, he pays the Wednesday, I pay the Thursday, and that's the way it goes. Then after, we have created 150 schools for entrepreneurs which we call the accelerators. The difference is that you belong to a team of 20 to 30 entrepreneurs who work together during two years, peer-to-peer pressure is maximum, and you have access to consultants. You go back to business schools. And it's called accelerator because the sort of ethical charter of the school ‘is I want to double the size of my company. How do I do it?’ We welcome to our schools 1000 SMEs per year.

‍

Simon Brewer 

And within that, of course, this is ambition that you mentioned earlier on is to encourage innovation. We had the head of McKinsey's strategy on talking about how that remains one of the great goals and one of the most difficult to effect. And again, I wonder, taking it from the high level to the implementation, how you think you're winning in that battle to enhance innovation.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

We have some KPIs. One of them is that we have promised to generate 500 deep-tech startups per year in France. When we pledged that, it was in January 2019. At the time, we were at 50. Now we are at 350 in 2022. We have made a lot progress and we will achieve the 500 deep-tech startups per year. We have another KPI which is that at least 50% of those deep-tech startups are green techs. And we have another KPI which is that those deep-tech startups at some point become industrial startups because they have invented complex objects that need to be fabricated, I would say, built, industrialized. And before, obviously, people would immediately go to Shenzhen, China. Today, the question why not in France is a relevant question, is a legitimate question. So we have also designed a target which is that we want to create 100 new factories per year in France out of those deep-tech startups. So as you see, we are very quantitative and we follow it up month by month.

‍

Simon Brewer 

One of the great French strengths is, of course, that quantitative approach in so many areas. We were introduced you through Paul Desmarais, the Chairman and CEO of Sagard Holdings, the Canadian global alternative asset manager, and we did a podcast with him on our second channel, the curated channel, which is absolutely fascinating. But he did have a question for you. I think he probably wanted to put you on the spot, which is, how have you created an entrepreneurial and innovative approach in a government organisation? And he cited your recent retail products as an example.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

I was lucky enough to have the trust of two French presidents, François Hollande and then Emmanuel Macron. I have a governance with a board in which we have a lot of independent board members coming from the private sector. Myself, I consider, at the same time, a serious citizen, but also a market guy. I spent 10 years in telecom private, and 10 years in IT private. You're not going to change me. And it makes a major, major difference with all the civil servants with whom I interact every week, and they respect that. Though the good news for maybe the people who are listening to me is that in a country like France which may bear the reputation of being very vertical and influenced by politics and so forth, in the past 10 years, probably only three times did I get a phone call asking me to invest in this or that company, and I said, no. So that answers your question.

‍

Simon Brewer 

It does. But just because it was brought up, what is this example of this retail product?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

I always thought that private equity was probably the best asset class in all those years of low-interest rates. It was something inappropriate democratically to make it impossible for the people to invest in it. So I decided to create a product which was private equity for the people, and this is what we did. So we changed our portfolio and organised a secondary transaction, and allowed the French people to invest in our portfolio of private equity with a minimum ticket of €3000, and it was a major success in France. So now, and this is the good news, a lot of institutional investors have replicated the product and I think France is probably, in the continent Europe, the country in which really we have opened the avenues of democratisation of private equity.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Yes, I would think that's right. And we obviously know where the US is with this but we can see how fractured and how much difference there is in the European landscape. Now, we had Philip Freise, who is the head of KKR, Europe's private equity business on the show last year, and he was very excited about the European landscape and opportunities, which of course, some may say, doesn't chime with the macro position. Just broadly, as you look at Europe, and we have got this some will say malaise, we have all the challenges, what is exciting you?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

There are so many investment opportunities in Europe today. It's unbelievable. And you're right to state that the contrast between the reality of opportunities and the global cause of malaise is something inexplicable. The difficulty probably for the non-European people is to understand the complexity of what's happening between the 27 countries today. When you look at the past five years, the speed at which the acceleration of federalism has taken us by surprise is unbelievable. So of course, then it can look like something not organised and sort of Cambrian, but at the end of the day, it's a reality, it's a reality. All those countries are massively investing in climate change. So for infrastructure, financing business, it's a cornucopia. Tech in Europe, because of the quality of the universe, is across the board all over the place in all the countries. Of course, in Europe, I integrate UK. The UK remains an extraordinary place for deep tech, extraordinary place for deep tech. We have a deep respect for what's happening in the UK in that respect. So I would say too bad for those who don't understand that.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Well, what is clear is that you are ahead of the UK with your wealth fund, and Will Campion, my co-founder, met recently with the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Nicholas Lyons, and he said we in the UK need a private sector UK Growth Fund of at least 50 billion to invest in long term asset classes, including infrastructure and private equity to support the growth economy, green tech and renewables. What advice would you give to somebody who possibly has a disadvantage of not being where France is, but has the advantage of starting at least and learning from others? What are the one or two things you would advise a place like the UK to do in starting a wealth fund?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq

This is where you know if you are doing something reasonable or not, is when you start to take LP money than government money. If you start to manage on behalf of private LPs as a sovereign fund, it means that you have reached the good point of independence. This is the case of BPI. BPI out of the €55 billion, we have €10 billion of LP money, and it's going to be more and more from the Gulf sovereign funds, for example, but also from the insurance companies, from the family offices, from the French corporate, and so forth. So I would say, this is what I wanted to build and I think we have succeeded. It was sort of French Temasek. So Temasek has a public origin, but is totally market practice, and it is recruiting capital outside of the Singaporean government. And it's the same for us. We are even managing now big funds which are totally private funds, in which whatsoever, the public governance has no voice. We have a fund of €5.2 billion, which is managed by Bpifrance’s equity branch, and it's a private fund. It's a pure private fund.

‍

Simon Brewer 

And do you find that you as one of the number of sovereign wealth funds talk to each other quite a lot and compare best practice, or do these sovereign wealth funds tend to exist in isolation?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

No, no, no. We talk a lot in different instances, but they have different origins. The miracle, I will call it a miracle, of the creation of BPI 10 years ago was that there was a broad-based political consensus to merge a bank, an equity branch, a funds of funds in a single entity. And if you have those elements, you find them in all the European countries, but they have not merged. You have an agency for innovation, you have a small bank for SME, you have another funds of funds with different governances, and for the entrepreneur, you need to know four or five phone numbers. Why has it not merged in the other countries? Because it's true that when you merge it all, it creates a powerhouse. A lot of countries are cautious before this idea creates such a powerhouse in the middle of the political ecosystem and not to be in the parliamentary countries of northern Europe, which I think is a pity, because for the entrepreneurs, it completely changes the landscape. So my dream is that in all the European countries, we have a BPI, which would be a sort of partner and colleague with whom we could build many, many years of cross-border partnerships.

‍

Simon Brewer 

So I think there are going to be many people listening to this episode who will be quite frankly very surprised and intrigued and will applaud what has been going on because many would not, like myself, have known this. But France is in the grip of protests against pension reforms. It's not unique. Strikes are happening across the world. We've got a demographic issue in Europe. Where does the solution lie in recognising that innovation, stimulus, job creation, entrepreneurship is absolutely central to the escape route, and yet these vested interests are proving immovable?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

You're right. The paradox is that the unemployment has never been so low. You would not find a single French entrepreneur who's not complaining against the impossibility to recruit today. There is no credit crunch at all, there is no equity crunch at all. Innovation is pervasive. The schools are working like mad, delivering good engineers, and so forth, and the French people still are, a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them are very much afraid about the future. That's the paradox of a country in which the economy is good. The welfare state has never been as generous as it is today. But people are afraid. So the role of BPI, where is it in the dimension? It is to say to everybody, and this is what we say every day, precisely because we have the most generous welfare state of the continent. You are free to become entrepreneurs. The risk is low, you are covered. You will have a retirement. You don't pay a single euro for your health. You don't pay a single euro for your education. The public transportation is subsidised and so forth, much, much more in other countries for everything. Precisely for that reason, you can become what you wanted to be, a free person, or an entrepreneur. That's the spirit of Bpifrance.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Well, that reminds me of Thomas Jefferson's quotation, which is ‘a walk around Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life’. So there we go, and an entrepreneurial culture. I have a few closing questions for you which are very general. You live in one of the great countries for food and wine. We did have Etienne Bizot, the CEO of Bollinger on an episode recently, which was fascinating. If you are going to pick a bottle of wine, Burgundy, Bordeaux or Alsace.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

Moselle. 

‍

Simon Brewer 

Moselle, okay.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

Moselle, exactly. Unknown wines, extraordinary wines.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Now, I've read that you're an ardent mountain climber, and in fact, did a month-long excursion in the Himalayas. What does that give you?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

You know, mountain climbing rejuvenates your appetite for life like no other sport because of the precision of the body that is necessary to reach the summit. And then when it's a one-month complete isolation expedition in Himalayas, you are recentered, I can tell you.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Well, on that subject, you may be familiar with the great French painter, Gabrielle Loppé, who comes out of Chamonix. I'm in the Alps at the moment, but there is a magnificent Gabrielle Loppé exhibition at the Forte di Bard, which is just below Aosta as you drive through, you keep going. This is a magnificent fort that held Napoleon up for 40 days on his march on Turin, and so angry was he that he destroyed. It was rebuilt I think 200 years ago, a magnificent Alpine exhibition. A good friend of the show, William Mitchell, has actually curated I think there are 60 Loppé paintings. Find yourself there at the Forte di Bard because it's absolutely beautiful.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

Yeah, thank you. You know, I have a house in Chamonix.

‍

Simon Brewer 

You do? Well, then voila! It's going to be through the tunnel. I'll send you the link to it anyway. Really very, very special and just as you find in Italy, magnificent food, great, stylish accommodation and sensible prices. Also coming from this country of great culture and so much, I would like you just share with listeners your favorite French film, French book, and French restaurant.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

Well, you know what? Currently, I'm reading a lot of English books in English. 

‍

Simon Brewer 

Okay. We'll allow you to answer an English book then. 

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

This summer, I read an extraordinary book which is from Simon Schama. It's The History of the British wars. Extraordinary book. Simon Schama is one of your great, great historians. I read a lot of history actually. A good restaurant? What I mostly prefer is a small restaurant which is just here off the boulevard, close to BPI with, we call that minute cooking, exceptional, fresh and good. And the movie, the movie. So many, many, many movies. Difficult to say. Honestly, difficult to say.

‍

Simon Brewer 

But you haven't given us the name of that restaurant, maybe because you're going to find it's booked out, then you can't get into your favorite recipe, but you need to give us the name.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

It is Passage des Panoramas.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Passage des Panoramas. Okay, well, I'm definitely going to go and try it on my next visit to France. And of course, the question that anybody listening to you and your very articulate and sensible and successful approach is going to ask, why not run for president?

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

You see what is the real life of a president today? Do I need to comment?

‍

Simon Brewer 

You are quite right. We might say no more.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

You need to have a resistance to aggression which is equal to none.

‍

Simon Brewer 

Well, look, Nicolas, you've been very generous with your time. People will be very surprised. You encapsulated by saying your ambition has almost become a French Temasek and I think that that and what you've been doing represents a proper entrepreneurial push that Europe needs. I think that everybody just about will be amazed that in your survey, 50% of youngsters want to be entrepreneurs in France as opposed to working in the civil service or other disciplines, and yet, Europe, for all of the macro headwinds and contradictions and political intrigue, to use a euphemism, there are lots of opportunities, which is keeping you motivated and excited and others and maybe the negativity is overdone. So Nicolas, thank you so much for being with us today.

‍

Nicolas Dufourcq 

Thank you for that. It was a great pleasure.

‍