Early beginnings From 1985 to 1988, Lauvergeon was with the l'Inspection générale des carrières (IGC). In 1990, she was placed in charge of the mission for the international economy and foreign trade by French President
François Mitterrand. The following year, she became assistant secretary-general. She was then named "
sherpa", i.e. personal representative to the president, and responsible for preparing international meetings such as the
G7 summit. In 1995, Lauvergeon joined the banking sector, and became a managing partner of
Lazard; she was the only woman partner at the firm. While at Lazard, she spent several months at the investment bank's New York office. In late 1996, she left the firm after difficulties with
Édouard Stern; according to media reports at the time, Stern had particularly taken exception to an invitation that Lauvergeon received to join the board of French aluminium company
Pechiney. In March 1997, Lauvergeon was appointed general director of
Alcatel, before becoming part of the group's executive committee. In that capacity, she was responsible for international activities and the company's industrial shareholdings in the energy and nuclear fields.
Career at Areva In June 1999 Lauvergeon was appointed CEO of the group
Cogema, succeeding
Jean Syrota, who resigned under pressure from
The Greens. In July 2001, she merged Cogema,
Framatome and other companies to create
Areva. At the head of the new company, she became a member of the small circle of women directing international corporations; in September 2002, daily economic newspaper
Les Échos uncovered a report from the French
Court of Auditors, citing Lauvergeon's compensation (salary of €305,000 with a bonus of €122,000) and "
golden parachute" of two years' wages. In 2004, Lauvergeon resisted a request from
Nicolas Sarkozy, then finance minister, to help bail out French transport and energy company
Alstom. When Alstom's leadership announced plans in 2008 to create a heavy-engineering conglomerate by combining Alstom and Areva in a single entity, Lauvergeon reiterated her opposition. Under Lauvergeon, Areva instead developed into a one-stop shop for nuclear energy. The company became one of the world's top uranium producers and mining accounted for 12 per cent of its 2010 revenue. On 10 July 2008 in the French economic paper
Challenges, she stated: "Uranium is a main part of our success. Our model is... Nespresso: we sell coffee machines and the coffee that fits them. And coffee is very profitable. So in China, we sold two nuclear islands, plus 35% of our uranium production. This is our integrated business model". Towards the end of 2006, Areva encountered difficulties with its new
European Pressurized Reactor and announced an expected delay of eighteen months to three years for its delivery, according to the French daily newspaper
La Tribune. The reactor is to be the first of its kind in
Finland. The delay may cost €700 million. Following the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, she traveled frequently to Japan and spoke out in regular television appearances in support of nuclear power. In addition to her role at Areva, Lauvergeon was part of other political and business initiatives. In 2001, France's Minister of Science
Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg chose her to chair the "national contest of assistance the creation of companies of innovating technologies". In June 2010 Lauvergeon attended the
Bilderberg conference in
Sitges, Spain. By 2011, Lauvergeon came under fire due to cost overruns at the Areva-built
Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant and the loss of a $40 billion contract in Abu Dhabi to a South Korean consortium. On 16 June 2011
Prime Minister François Fillon announced that her mandate as head of Areva, terminating end of June 2011, would not be renewed. She was replaced by
Luc Oursel, member of the Areva board of management since 2007. Since leaving Areva, Lauvergeon has been a partner and managing director of Efficiency Capital, an investment firm that focuses on energy, technologies, and natural resources. She is also chairman and CEO of A.L.P. SAS, an advisory company. By 2016, media reported that
President François Hollande had proposed Lauvergeon to take over as chair of the board at
EADS and had won the backing of
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for her candidature.
Controversies On 16 October 2009 Lauvergeon addressed journalists outside the "Women’s Forum" organised in
Deauville. She declared: "To be clear, with same competences, sorry, we will choose the woman or something else rather than the white male." She said these words during the
France 2 evening news. This statement generated reaction and was chosen as an example by
Éric Zemmour and
Marine Le Pen to explain that
positive discrimination was a kind of racism. In 2011, Lauvergeon filed a legal complaint after she discovered a confidential report by private investigators on her husband Olivier Fric's business activities. By 2012, she asked a French court to appoint an expert to examine the circumstances under which Areva ordered a probe in 2010 into the 2007 purchase of Canadian uranium mining firm UraMin; the request was subsequently denied. An internal audit into the deal did not reveal fraud, but said that presentations made to state holding company
APE and to Areva's board about the planned UraMin acquisition had not given enough prominence to the doubts that the internal technical teams had expressed. Areva initially withheld Lauvergeon's 1.5 million euro ($2 million) severance pay due to the UraMin dispute. Also in 2012, a court ordered the company to sign a contract allowing Lauvergeon to receive her severance pay. Only 11 days before the first round of the
2012 French presidential election, Lauvergeon accused Sarkozy in an interview with French weekly ''
L'Express'' of having tried to sell an atomic reactor to Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi until mid-2010. In the interview, Lauvergeon also said Sarkozy had offered her a cabinet seat when he was elected in 2007 but she had refused. Sarkozy's spokeswoman
Valérie Pécresse responded by accusing Lauvergeon of trying to "settle scores", calling her statements as "fictitious". At the time, Lauvergeon was tipped as a possible minister in a Socialist government under
François Hollande. In 2016, Lauvergeon was put under formal investigation for her role in the UraMin acquisition, over questions on whether she deliberately submitted misleading annual accounts that concealed huge writedowns on its €1.8 billion investment in UraMin. Also, French judicial authorities investigated Fric for
insider trading and
money laundering over the UraMin purchase. ==Personal life==