ABSTRACT
The French groups Veolia and Suez are the two leading water businesses worldwide. Their undeniable preeminence stems not only from the number of people they serve but also from their broad service offerings, international presence, and capacity to innovate. This chapter explores how these firms have gone from being local water companies to becoming powerful transnational corporations. By reviewing their origins and development, it demonstrates how these companies have transnationalized their competitive advantages over time by accumulating resources, creating capabilities, and implementing adaptation strategies to different local contexts. This chapter also shows that this process has been largely favored by the active interventionism of the French state in the creation of institutional and regulatory mechanisms that have promoted private sector involvement and diffused the “expertise” of French water businesses internationally. On the other hand, it analyzes how the current services, technologies, and geographic markets of Veolia and Suez function as part of their strategy to continuously create demand and new business opportunities in the water and environmental sectors at the global level.
