Patrick Kron

Kron is the son of Polish-Jewish[1] immigrants who survived the Nazi concentration camps and detention at the end of the 1940s, when they moved to France. Patrick Kron started his education after high school at Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour as a young boy at the elite university École Polytechnique in Paris, and attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines.[2]

He started his career at the French Ministry of Industry (Minister of the Economy, Finances and Industry, the Ministère de l'Économie, des Finances et du Commerce extérieur), where he worked from 1979 to 1984. From 1979 to 1983 he was stationed at the Direction régionale de l'Industrie, de la Recherche et de l'Environnement (DRIRE) in the Pays de la Loire.

From 1984 to 1997 he worked for Pechiney, becoming president of the Electrometallurgy Division, and later chairman of the board of the Carbone Lorraine Company from 1993 to 1997.

He became chief executive of Alstom on 1 January 2003. He became chairman of Alstom on 11 March 2003.[3] While under Kron’s leadership, Alstom was investigated by the United States Department of Justice and ultimately agreed to pay a $772 million fine; some mid-level Alstom executives were jailed or fined as a result of that investigation. However, Kron himself was never charged or prosecuted by government authorities in the United States, France or elsewhere. In 2015, General Electric acquired Alstom’s power generation and transmission businesses; following the completion of that transaction, Kron retired as Alstom’s CEO.[4]

In 2016, he started the international consulting firm PKC&I, and became Chairman of Truffle Capital, a venture capital firm focused on BioMedTech and FinTech & InsureTech. [5] He also sits on the Board of Directors of listed companies (Sanofi, LafargeHolcim) and of a non-listed company (SEGULA Technologies). Since June 2019, he is Chairman of the Board of Directors at Imerys.[6]

He was awarded the Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honour) on 30 September 2004 and became an Officer of National Order of Merit (Ordre national du Mérite) on 18 November 2007.

• Alstom