Changes in Industrial and Financial French Capitalism The end of the XX century is marked as the primacy of capitalism as an economic system. Nevertheless it is not question of one single capitalism, but distinct kind of capitalism according to the development steps reached. In other words capitalism of the Rhineland lived with the Anglo-Saxon and Asian capitalisms. France is not excluded from this phenomenon. Indeed, industry and finance sectors got through very significant changes. That’s why the former structures and organizations tend to disappear in favor of other ones linked to efficiency and globalization requirements.

I- Changes in French industrial capitalism:

Over the past decades, the French industry has been getting through a lot of penalizing difficulties, but some long-term transformations of the sector let us still hope about an serene future.

A- The weaknesses of the French industry:

The decreasing of labor productivity gains and capital productivity has been proved since the decade 1960. Over the past few decades, French growth (as in most of developed countries) is slow and negative sometimes. The long-term change is necessary because of four relevant weaknesses of the French companies in the industry sector.

1- Under-market capitalization:

The first weakness is under-market capitalization. In fact, nowadays French companies are under-capitalized that keeps them vulnerable in comparison to the competitors. Besides, the big nationalized sector and the large protection of a regulated economy allowed the development of “a without-equity capitalism” in which equity is substituted by public subsidies. To illustrate, in France market capitalization is only a 50% of national wealth whereas in the United Kingdom is 130%. So we can note that a weakness of the French industry is its dependence of the French State.

2- Low profitability of the French companies:

The second