The State participation agency is a Service à compétence nationale (service with national competence) created in September 2004. The creation of the Agency responded to the need to clarify the role of a shareholder of the State and the promotion of its patrimonial interests alongside the regulatory functions, tax collection, sectoral supervision, buyer that the State exercises. This first step provided the State with a structure embodying and exclusively exercising its role as a shareholder. The second step was to endow the APE with greater autonomy. The appointment of a State Equity Commissioner, reporting directly to the
French Ministry of the Economy and Finance, completed the process. Since May 2017, the APE has 88 companies in its portfolio. Since 2001, the activity of the State shareholder has been traced every year in a report appended to the draft Loi de finances en France (Finance law in France).
Operations The main operations carried out by the agency were: • 2003 • Merger of
Air-France and
KLM • Transformation of DCN into a
public limited company in 2003, which became
Naval Group in 2017 • 2004 • Transformation of
France Telecom into a
public limited company in 2004, which became
Orange in 2006 • 2005 • Merger between
SNECMA and
SAGEM, which became
Safran in 2005 • Opening of the capital of
EDF with nearly 5 million subscriptions from individuals • Initial public offering of
Gaz de France and its listing on
CAC 40 • Transformation of
ADP into a
public limited company • 2006 • Opening of the capital and the IPO of
Aéroports de Paris in 2006 with 2.6M orders • Disposal of Société des autoroutes du Nord et de l'Est de la France, Autoroutes Paris-Rhin-Rhône and Autoroutes du Sud de la France • 2007 • Entry of
Thales into the capital of
DCN • 2008 • Merger between
Gaz de France and
Suez to create the GDF-Suez group which became
Engie in 2015 • 2010 • Merger of the two tunnel boring companies SFTRF and ATMB • Transformation of
La Poste into a
public limited company • 2012 • Recapitalization of
Dexia • 2013 • Takeover of the debt of the EPFR – Établissement public de financement et de restructuration (Public financing and restructuring institution) contracted vis-à-vis
Crédit Lyonnais • Creation of the
Bpifrance (BPI) • 2014 • Acquisition of a stake in
PSA Peugeot Citroën • Acquisition of a stake in
Marseille Provence Airport • 2015 • Restructuring of the nuclear sector started with
EDF, Areva and
Orano • Restructuring of the land armaments sector with the merger of
Nexter and
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann to form
KNDS • 2017 • Merger between
Safran and
Zodiac Aérospace • Provisional nationalization of the
Chantiers de l'Atlantique of
Saint-Nazaire • 2018 • Reform of the
public broadcasting • New Railway Pact • 2019 • Privatization of
La Française des Jeux • 2023 • Elimination of
GIAT Industries from the
SNPE-
Eurenco structure • 2024 • Acquisition of 80% stake in
Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) == Goal ==