The announcement of Novasco’s partial takeover on Monday 17 November is not the final chapter in this industrial soap opera. Mélenchonist MP Aurélie Trouvé announced this Tuesday that the La France insoumise group in the Assembly will open, at a date still unknown, a commission of inquiry “on the predation of French productive capacity by speculative funds”. To do this, they want to take advantage of their “right of withdrawal”. – possibility for parliamentary groups to establish commissions of inquiry at each ordinary session of the Assembly.
Behind this convoluted name, the insurgents aim to target “hedge funds,” or investment funds, buying companies at sometimes high social costs. Their critics accuse them of prioritizing profits and financial logic over factory closures and losses or even the export of knowledge and means of production.
Addressing the press, Aurélie Trouvé cited the example of steelmaker Novasco (formerly Ascometal) whose Strasbourg court ruled on Monday “partial transfer” to a consortium of investors, at the cost of closing three of the company’s four locations. “Yesterday there was a demolition of the large Novasco steel company, 550 employees disappeared,” underlines the member for Seine-Saint-Denis.
The government announced on Monday that it would take legal action against Greybull UK, the buyer “kill” responsible for the critical situation in Novasco. The investment fund that took over the metallurgical company in 2024 was accused of not keeping its commitments. But this was not enough to satisfy the rebels, who considered the case of the French metallurgist to be far from isolated.
The investigation, work on which will begin in 2017, “aims to reach the scale (phenomenon) that has occurred since (Emmanuel) Macron led this country”, Aurélie Trouvé confirms this “France is one of the first global targets of this speculative fund.” And the former president of economic affairs of the Assembly mentioned a series of “hedge funds” operating in France, such as German Mutares, a specialist in economics. “takeovers, often symbolic for 1 euro, of companies in trouble, and promising to turn things around.”
In their proposed resolution explaining the reasons motivating the opening of this investigative commission, the rebel deputies emphasized that Mutares “has caused many companies to go bankrupt, not without monopolizing their cash flow through the management fees charged to them.” And “There are many similar examples”, underlines LFI.
Recalling the many examples cited by the Mélenchists since the first election of Emmanuel Macron, they made it clear that their commission of inquiry would not stop at a simple evaluation of the scale and consequences of this. “predation”. He will also ask “responsibility of the state and public and private actors since 2017” ; and there will also be a fee “to assess the short, medium and long term threats posed by hedge fund activities”. This should all lead to some proposals to put forward to the hemicycle.
