The new clothes CAC 40 – The World

A little more service companies, just under manufacturing groups: so goes the CAC 40, which reflects a little better the structural evolution of the French economy, even if the bank and industry still weigh heaviest. Euronext his manager announced on Thursday 10 March, the giant Sodexo (catering, management of remote sites, hospitals …) will replace Alstom March 21 in the benchmark index of the Paris Bourse, and that reinstating the club he left in 2005

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After the exclusion of EDF end of 2015, it is a other industrial flagship that fades. The output of the electricity giant had been a half-surprise. The CAC 40 index takes into account the volume of shares actually outstanding and the number of exchanges on the title. And those of EDF were very low, the state holding 84.5% of its capital. In addition, the group saw its capitalization blend of over 50% in a year, hit by the crisis in the European energy market

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the departure of Alstom was as expected, but for another reason: the sharp reduction in its field of activities. The “group of Belfort” goes into effect in the next lower category CAC 20 after sale to US conglomerate General Electric of all of its activities in energy for 9.7 billion euros. It is only worth 4.7 billion, three times less than Sodexo (14.4 billion). Refocused on transport (high-speed trains, subways, trams, traffic), the company is doing quite as far, as evidenced by Thursday, laying the first stone of a plant in South Africa.

An index trompe l’oeil

the return of Sodexo remember that these are not services of companies that will still weigh heaviest in the some 1 200 billion euros Paris capitalization. Between them, the seven first CAC 40 companies (Total, Sanofi, L’Oreal, LVMH, BNP Paribas, AXA, Airbus) totaling 510 billion. Others follow closely, as Vinci, Danone, Air Liquide or Engie. This over-representation of industry might suggest that France is a great industrial power. The CAC 40 is a sham.

The share of industry in GDP (around 12%) erodes, more than our major competitors. These are not plants that are source of jobs but services – a structural trend that began in the 1960s INSEE announced on Thursday that if the market employment rose in 2015 for the first time since 2011, thanks to the tertiary. Sodexo and its 420,000 employees replace Alstom and its 32,000 employees. Unless swim against the tide of technology that pushes a “factory of the future” with fewer workers, we must admit that re-industrialization and job creation are now two different objectives.

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