1970-1982
An "a la francaise" multinational
The 1960s and 1970s brought deep-reaching changes across French society – and predictably sent ripples through a number of business sectors. Big industrial firms were groping for the critical mass they needed to survive in the new “economic world war”.
A merger that made sense
Looking back, the 1970 merger between Saint-Gobain and Pont-à-Mousson was nothing unusual in its day (French industry was in the throes of a wholesale metamorphosis). But, as opposed to the other moves, it lasted.
Saint-Gobain and Pont-à-Mousson had synchronised their strategic courses and merged their time-honoured traditions. But, most importantly, the merger answered the questions that both groups had been asking after walking away from their non-strategic chemical and steel business lines. They had both already started moving towards the same Housing concept, and the business lines they pooled all gravitated around lasting processes that had room to improve. Their glass, cast iron, worksite operations and packaging added up to a product range targeting a number of specific markets rather than specific business cultures. The business lines were all capital-intensive, and provided the core from whence all subsequent developments sprang.
A route paved with many crisis
The original merger plans ran into a number of obstacles that forced these companies into adjusting their course. The two oil crises – and the two worldwide economic crises resulting from them – derailed the original strategic visions. Stagnation hurt the group’s core business lines, they stopped growing, and their profits eroded. They started looking at balancing out their portfolio with more promising prospects. One of the options involved a big stride: acquiring a controlling interest in Bull, an IT group, to provide the foundations of the future “European IBM” (with electronic components upstream and office computers downstream).
