ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the financialisation of French firms did not change the main divides that structure the French economic elite. The sociology and history of French elites has long pointed to the impressive stability of the origins and education of CEOs, and especially the role played by a few schools in operating this reproduction under the guise of Republican elitism. Most of the studies on the French economic elite focus on CEOs and on industrial firms, and generally reconstruct variables on their background, as opposed to their early careers. A French or even Latin model of careers of top executives has sometimes been described as involving an important mobility both between firms and between functions in firms, especially as contrasted with the German model. In many respects, a first financialisation can be considered to have happened in France from the 1950s to the 1970s.
