Biography|Frédéric Saint-Geours — The Year He Left Bercy for the 75

People date his industrial life from the Peugeot chair in 1998.

The company date is twelve years earlier and quieter.

In 1986, after the first cohabitation turned the socialists out of the Finance ministry, he left the cabinet of Henri Emmanuelli and entered PSA Peugeot Citroën as adjoint au directeur financier.

The group headquarters then sat at 75 avenue de la Grande-Armée, the Sainsaulieu office block between the Arc de Triomphe and Porte Maillot that staff simply called the 75.

He became directeur financier of the group in 1988.

In April 1990 he moved across to Automobiles Peugeot as directeur général adjoint.

That sequence is the one later PSA releases and the Caradisiac notice of November 2007 both print.

The building is the point.

Decisions about the lion brand were not taken at Sochaux in those years.

They were taken in this nine-storey block on the avenue that runs west from the Étoile.

PSA occupied it from the mid-1960s until the last working Friday in September 2017, when the staff packed for Rueil-Malmaison.

The walls have since been rebuilt as a speculative office named L1VE.

A visitor will not find a Peugeot plate on the door.

The 1986 arrival still belongs here.

It is the moment a cabinet énarque became a car-company officer, two years before he held the group purse and eight years before he held the Peugeot brand.

No private diary is needed for the pin.

The address is on every PSA letterhead of the period.

Photo: Flickr photographer 12403504@N06, CC0, Peugeot frontage on avenue de la Grande-Armée, via Wikimedia Commons

Portrait: MEDEF, CC BY-SA 2.0, 27 August 2008, via Wikimedia Commons