Elites, ownership and the internationalisation of French business

This article is based on a prosopographical study of comparative business elites in France and Britain, drawing on the work of social theorists Pierre Bourdieu and Ezra Suleiman. There is evidence to suggest that cross-shareholdings, at the heart of French capitalism since the 1960s, have begun to unravel, under pressure from globalisation. Yet the cultural substrata that underlie French business practices are powerful. More likely than the complete undoing of cross-shareholdings is the adaptation of the national system to suit international structures. The authors argue, at least provisionally, that French shareholdings are being ceded for a stake in a wider international game, in an attempt to enable French management elites to maintain hegemonic control of leading domestic and European enterprises, in this way pre-emptively and proactively engaging with the structural logic of globalisation.