France's successful throwback
In Britain, when you talk of national champions, you say this in a deprecating way,” says Jean-Louis Beffa. “But the French use ‘national champion' to discuss a company that is a leader in its field: when we say it, it sounds OK.”
Mr Beffa, one of France's top industrialists, knows what he is talking about. Since 1986, he has been chairman and chief executive of Saint-Gobain, the world's second biggest glassmaker. Currently, he is busily completing a report, commissioned by Jacques Chirac, the French president, on how France, and perhaps the rest of Europe too, can stimulate economic growth through technological innovation. The report from the 63-year-old former engineer is due to land on Mr Chirac's desk next week. Mr Beffa, speaking at Saint-Gobain's all-glass headquarters in Paris, contests the conventional Anglo-American view that national ownership in industry is unimportant. He says the decision to allow General Electric, the US industrial conglomerate, to buy Amersham International, the UK biotechnology leader, which was once owned by the British taxpayer, was a mistake. “You [the UK] should never have let it go. The UK government should have made sure it was kept on strategic grounds. Amersham is at least as important as Rolls-Royce [the aero-engine maker], which I am sure is considered strategically important.”
He says that Europe should follow the lead of Japan rather than continue the trend towards unfettered observance of the free market principles of the US. “In general, Japanese industry is highly technology-oriented and has been a success. Government action in Japan has played a big part in creating this state of affairs.”
Mr Beffa suggests that governments should nurture excellent companies through programmes of research and public procurement and, if need be, help them out. The French government's decision to assist Alstom, the troubled French engineer which flirted with bankruptcy, was a good thing, he says. “I thought it was important for Alstom to be given more time to restructure. The action was right.”
Such ideas appear to represent a throwback to discredited ways of running industrial economies. But Mr Beffa insists his concepts are sound, citing his own company as an example of what can be achieved.
Even though Saint-Gobain's direct involvement with the government's strategic planners ended some time ago, he reserves the right for them to have some kind of role at the company perhaps in helping research and development in the future.
As France's oldest industrial company, Saint-Gobain has an illustrious history, having been founded in 1665. Under Mr Beffa's stewardship, Saint-Gobain has transformed itself from a state-owned business to a diversified group with expected sales in 2004 of about �31bn ($42bn). The company was privatised at the end of 1986 but protected from takeover until the mid-1990s thanks to cross-shareholdings by other companies controlled by the government. Nowadays Saint-Gobain has a broad list of shareholders. It is the second biggest maker of flat glass after Asahi of Japan and the second biggest producer of glass bottles and other glass containers, after Owens-Illinois of the US. While the UK glassmaker Pilkington Saint-Gobain's great historic rival has become something of an industrial laggard, the French company has tripled its sales since Mr Beffa took the helm and become more international. This has been achieved through an internal management programme that like Mr Beffa's views about the role of governments have also sparked controversy. The fashion for much of the past 20 years has been for companies to focus on “core” areas of business. But Saint-Gobain has done things differently: deliberately tacking on new businesses in order to spread operational risks and allow room for growth.
Since Mr Beffa took over, Saint-Gobain has been on a buying spree, acquiring 900 companies. Nearly 40 per cent of sales in 2003 came from the distribution of building materials, which is a service-based business that until the 1990s was unknown to the company.
Saint-Gobain has also spread out into new manufacturing fields such as high-tech ceramics and catalysts, for use in businesses such as semiconductors and cars, as well as industrial abrasives. In 2003, the company's previously dominant business of flat glass accounted for only 14 per cent of revenues, similar to its division making “high performance” materials. Explaining the logic to this change, Mr Beffa pours scorn on ideas about “focus”: “A diversified company has many benefits,” he says. “Look at Siemens [the German electrical goods company]. They are better for having a mix of companies from which they can get strong cashflow.” Balancing distribution operations covering a broad range of items for the building trade and operated mainly on a regional basis with the global manufacturing of flat glass and containers makes sense, he insists. While glass production is a highly cyclical business which changes with the perturbations of the international economy, the distribution of building materials is altogether more stable because of the ways that different national markets have their own peculiar patterns of troughs and peaks.
Saint-Gobain's strategy fo diversification gives it the monied muscle-power to get bigger. “Saint-Gobain has about �2.8bn a year from cashflow,” says Mr Beffa. “About half of this goes on capital spending. The rest can be spent on acquisitions in any of our three main business fields.”
But running such a business is not easy. “You have to ensure that no business is a complete laggard. You need executives with a lot of experience who are able to build up expertise in certain areas and transfer skills horizontally across the business. For instance, in Saint-Gobain, we can transfer legal expertise between companies in our different fields or knowledge of how to build up growth in developing markets. We know about using specific financial instruments in different parts of the world.”
Saint-Gobain encourages the flow of ideas on a horizontal basis between divisions through its nine “delegate offices” which amount to miniature headquarters but, Mr Beffa insists, have very little bureaucracy in nine countries around the world. These offices located in, among other countries, India, China, Mexico , the US and Brazil act as collection points for ideas so that executives can pass them on with maximum efficiency.
In 2003, only 7 per cent of Saint-Gobain's sales came from outside its main markets of Europe and North America. Mr Beffa wants to change this. He has plans to expand in South America and Asia. In the future, he suggests that Saint-Gobain and other “national champions” could be helped by European governments directing more technology cash to help their movement into new businesses that would spur growth in the broader European economy. Such efforts state investment would “strengthen the strong” and, in Saint-Gobain's case, help the company develop new reinforcing materials for industry or novel glass structures for flat-screen TVs.
“I'm not saying that the role of the state [in industrial matters] is all important,” says Mr Beffa, acknowledging the important role of the market. “But I believe that governments can have a catalytic effect. A government can influence technology development. It can think ahead better in technology programmes, which often needs to be as long as 15 years.”
法国企业要政府走回头路
让-路易?贝法（Jean-Louis Beffa）说，“在英国，当你提到全国最佳的字眼时，你会用贬低的口吻说出来。但法国人却用‘全国最佳’来谈论一个行业里的领头企业：我们说这个词时，听上去很正常。”
贝法先生是法国最出色的实业家之一，他知道自己在说什么。自1986年以来，他一直担任圣戈班（Saint-Gobain）的董事长兼首席执行官，该公司是全球第二大玻璃制造商。目前他正忙于完成一份由法国总统雅克?希拉克（Jacques Chirac）委派的报告，就法国――也许还有欧洲其他地区――如何通过技术创新来刺激经济增长提出建议。今年63岁的贝法先生曾是一名工程师。他的报告将于本周摆在希拉克总统的办公桌上。贝法先生是在圣戈班位于巴黎总部的全玻璃大厦中说上述这番话的。他表示，他不同意国家拥有工业产权并不重要这一传统的英美观点。他说，英国决定让美国工业集团通用电气（GE）收购英国生物技术领先企业Amersham International是个错误。Amersham International 一度由英国纳税人所有。“你们（英国）当初绝不该放走它。出于战略原因，英国政府应该确保留住这个企业。Amersham至少和（航空发动机制造商）罗尔斯-罗伊斯（Rolls-Royce）一样重要。我确信，罗尔斯-罗伊斯在战略上就被认为很重要。”
他表示，欧洲应效仿日本的做法，而不是继续一味遵从美国的自由市场原则。“总的来说，日本工业具有高度的技术导向性，并已成功。在创造这一境界的过程中，日本政府的行动起了重大作用。”
贝法先生建议，各国政府应通过研究及公开采购等计划来培养表现卓越的企业，而且在必要时帮助这些企业摆脱困境。他说，法国政府决定帮助阿尔斯通（Alstom），这就是一件好事。“我认为，让阿尔斯通有更多时间进行重组很重要。这样做是正确的。”陷入困境的阿尔斯通是法国工程集团，一度濒临破产。
这种想法似乎是一次倒退，回到以前并不光彩的工业经济管理方式的老路上。但贝法先生坚持认为，他的观点是合理的，并以自己的公司为例，说明这样做可以取得什么成绩。
尽管圣戈班让政府战略规划人员直接参与公司事务的做法已经终止一段时间了，但贝法先生仍为他们保留了在公司扮演某种角色的权利，例如协助公司未来的研发工作。
作为法国历史最悠久的工业公司，圣戈班有着辉煌的历史。公司成立于1665年。在贝法先生的领导下，圣戈班已从一家国有企业转变成一个业务多元化的集团，预计2004年销售额达到大约310亿欧元（合420亿美元）。公司于1986年年末实行私有化，由于政府控制的一些公司对其交叉持股，使圣戈班直至上世纪90年代中期以前都免受收购威胁。目前圣戈班的股东构成非常广泛。公司是全球第二大平板玻璃生产商，仅次于日本的旭硝子（Asahi），并且是全球第二大玻璃瓶和其它玻璃容器生产商，排在美国Owens-Illinois之后。虽然圣戈班的强大宿敌英国玻璃生产商皮尔金顿（Pilkington）已成为一家落后的工业企业，但自贝法先生入主圣戈班以来，这家法国公司的销售额已翻了3倍，并已变得更加国际化。这是通过一个内部管理计划而实现的，就像贝法先生有关政府在企业中所起作用的观点一样，这个计划也引起了争议。在过去20年的大部分时间里，一般企业的流行做法是将重点放在“核心”业务领域上。然而圣戈班的做事方式则不同：刻意附加新的业务，以分散经营风险，并获得成长空间。
自贝法先生执掌公司以来，圣戈班一直积极展开收购，目前已收购了900家公司。2003年有近40%的销售额来自建材分销。这是一个基于服务的业务，在上世纪90年代以前公司还不了解这块业务。
圣戈班还将业务拓展至新的制造业领域，比如用于半导体和汽车行业的高科技陶瓷和催化剂，此外还有工业研磨剂。在2003年，公司先前的主业平板玻璃制造仅占营收的14%，与公司“高性能”材料制造部门在营收中所占比例相仿。在解释这一变化的逻辑时，贝法先生对有关注重业务“重点”的想法不屑一顾：“公司多元化有很多好处，”他说，“看看西门子（Siemens，德国电气产品企业），由于拥有多种多样的分公司，并可以从中获得强劲的现金流，它们的表现更好。”他坚持认为，分销业务涉及建筑业的众多货品，并主要在地区范围内操作；而平板玻璃和容器则在全球各地制造，因此在地区分销与全球制造之间达成平衡很有意义。玻璃生产具有很强的周期性，它随着世界经济的波动而变化，但建筑材料的分销总体而言却稳定得多，因为不同国家的市场有其各自特有的高低潮模式。
圣戈班的多元化战略令它财力雄厚，并得以发展壮大。“圣戈班每年约有28亿欧元现金流，”贝法先生说，“其中约一半用于资本开支，剩余部分可以用在我们三大业务领域中任何一块的收购。”
但经营这样一家企业并非易事。“你必须确保没有任何一项业务完全落后。你需要经验丰富的经理人，他们能在特定领域建立专长、并将这种技能横向转移到企业的不同部门。例如在圣戈班，我们可以在不同领域的企业之间转移法律专业技能，或者在发展中地区市场如何推进增长的知识。我们知道如何在全球不同的地方运用特定金融工具。”
圣戈班鼓励公司内部通过9个“代表处”（相当于微型的地区总部），在分支机构之间横向交流意见。但贝法先生强调说，分布于全球9个国家的这些代表处没有多少官僚陋习。它们位于印度、中国、墨西哥、美国和巴西等不同国家，充当各种思想的归集点，这样企业高管们就能以最高的效率来交流各种想法。
在圣戈班2003年的销售收入中，仅有7%是来自其欧洲和北美主要市场以外的地区。贝法先生想改变这一状况，他计划扩大在南美和亚洲的销售。他表示，如果将来欧洲政府拨付更多技术资金，帮助圣戈班和其它“全国最佳”企业进入一些新业务领域，从而刺激欧洲经济的全面增长，那么圣戈班和其他“全国最佳”企业将会受益。此类政府投资措施将“巩固强者”，而就圣戈班来说，将有助于该公司开发工业用新型强化材料，或用于纯平电视的新型玻璃结构。
“我并不是说，国家（在工业事务中）的角色至关重要，”贝法先生说，他承认市场扮演着非常重要的角色。“但我相信，政府能发挥一种催化剂的作用。政府能影响技术发展。它能在科技计划中更好地进行前瞻性思考，这通常需要提前15年之久。”
