Jacques Attali

Early life

Jacques Attali was born on 1 November 1943 in Algiers (Algeria), with his twin brother Bernard Attali, in a Jewish family . His father, Simon Attali, is a self-educated person who achieved success in perfumery ("Bib et Bab" shop) in Algiers. He married to Fernande Abécassis on 27 January 1943. On 11 February 1954, his mother gave birth to his sister, Fabienne. In 1956, two years after the beginning of the Algerian independence war (1954–1962), his father decided to move to Paris, with his family (Jacques was then 13).

Jacques and Bernard studied at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, in the 16th arrondissement, where they met Jean-Louis Bianco and Laurent Fabius. In 1966, Jacques graduated from the École polytechnique (first of the class of 1963). He also graduated from the École des mines, Sciences Po and the École nationale d'administration (third of the class of 1970).

In 1968, while doing an internship at the prefecture of a French department (Nièvre), he met for the second time with François Mitterrand, then President of the department, whom he had met for the first time three years before.

in 1972, Jacques Attali received a Ph.D. in economics from University Paris Dauphine, for a thesis written under the supervision of Alain Cotta. Michel Serres was among the jury of his Ph.D.

In 1970, when he was 27, he became a member of the Council of State. In 1972, aged 29, he published his first two books, Analyse économique de la vie politique and Modèles politiques, for which he was awarded with a prize from the Academy of Sciences.

Academic career

Jacques Attali taught economics from 1968 to 1985 at the Paris Dauphine University, at the École polytechnique and at the École des Ponts et chaussées.

In his laboratory in Dauphine, the IRIS, he gathered several young researchers Yves Stourdzé (who ran the European research program EUREKA co-founded by Jacques Attali), Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, and Érik Orsenna, but also leading figures in various fields (including journalism, mathematics, show business, financial analysis).

Political career

Jacques Attali's close collaboration with François Mitterrand started in December 1973. His directed his political campaign for the presidential elections in 1974. He then became his main chief of staff in the opposition. In 1981, François Mitterrand, after he was elected President, named him as his special adviser. From this moment on, Jacques Attali wrote, each evening, notes for the attention of the French President, which dealt with economics, culture, politics or the last book he read. He also attended all the Cabinet meetings, the Defense Council, and all bilateral meetings between President François Mitterrand and foreign heads of States and governments. The President also entrusted him with the role of "sherpa" (personal representative of a head of State) for the European and G7 summits.

Jacques Attali then enlarged his circle of acquaintances to Raymond Barre, Jacques Delors, Philippe Séguin, Jean-Luc Lagardère, Antoine Riboud, Michel Serres, Coluche. He advised the President to get Jean-Louis Bianco, Alain Boublil and several young, promising graduates from the École nationale d’administration (like François Hollande and Ségolène Royal) to join his team.

In 1982, he pleaded for "economic rigour". As "sherpa" of Mitterrand during 10 years, he organised the Versailles G7 summit in 1982 and the G7 Summit of the Arch in 1989. He took an active part in the organization of the celebrations for the bicentenary of the French Revolution on July, 14th 1989.

In 1997, upon the request of Claude Allègre, he proposed a reform of the tertiary education degree system which led to the implementation of the LMD model.

In 2008 and 2010, he was asked by then President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair a bipartisan commission aiming at proposing reforms to foster French economic growth. In 2013, Jacques Attali advocated the concept of positive economy in a report delivered to President François Hollande at his request. His ideas inspired some of the provisions of the law proposed by Emmanuel Macron, Minister of Economy.

On 7 April 2011, in Washington, D.C., the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the United States’ Smithsonian Institution presented the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service to Jacques Attali, founder and president of PlaNet Finance.

International career

In 1979, he imagined and founded the international NGO Action contre la Faim (ACF).

In 1984, he imagined and implemented the European program EUREKA, dedicated to the "development of new technologies", the direction of which he entrusted to Yves Stourdzé.

In January 1989, he initiated a vast international plan of action against the disastrous flooding in Bangladesh.

In August 1989, during François Mitterrand’s second mandate, Jacques Attali gave up politics and left the Elysée Palace. He founded the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in London, and became its first president. He had initiated the idea of this institution in June 1989, before the fall of the Berlin wall, in order to support the reconstruction of Eastern European countries. He chaired the Paris negotiating conference which led to the creation of the EBRD. Under his leadership, the EBRD promoted investments which aimed at protecting nuclear power plants, protecting the environment and, more generally, developing infrastructure, reinforcing private sector competitiveness and support transition to democracy.

In 1991, Attali invited Mikhail Gorbachev to the EBRD headquarters, in London, against the opinion of British prime minister John Major. By doing so, he compelled the heads of State of the G7, who were attending a summit in this town, to receive the Soviet head of State. After a stormy phone call between Jacques Attali and John Major, the British press started to criticize Attali and spread suspicions about his management of the institution. Uncontested details of the management of the EBRD – including of inefficiency and profligacy – were shocking. Some of these details were taken up by some French journalists. Jacques Attali explains his stance in a chapter of his book C’était François Mitterrand, entitled "Verbatim and the EBRD": "the work in question had been done under the supervision of an international working group to which I did not belong". Indeed, when Attali left the EBRD (voluntarily) the board of governors gave him final discharge for the management of the institution. However, his reputation never recovered.

In 1993, Attali won a libel suit; he had been accused of having reproduced in his book verbatim, without François Mitterrand’s authorization, secret archives and several sentences of the French head of State which were meant for another book. The Herald Tribune even published, on the front page, an article claiming (wrongly) that President Mitterrand had asked for the book to be withdrawn from sale. François Mitterrand confirmed in a long interview that he had asked Attali to write this book, and acknowledged that he had proofread it and had been given the possibility to make corrections.

In 1998, Attali founded Positive Planet, a non-profit organization which is active in more than 80 countries, employing over 500 staff, and provides funding, technical assistance and advisory services to 10,000 microfinance players and stakeholders. Positive Planet is also active in France empoverished suburbs.

In 2001 Attali was subject to investigations on the charges of "concealment of company assets which have been misused and influence peddling". He was discharged on 27 October 2009 by the magistrate’s court of Paris, "on the benefit of the doubt".

Jacques Attali advocates the establishment of a global rule of law, which will condition the survival of democracy through the creation of a new global order. He thinks the regulation of the economy by a global financial supervisory institution may be a solution to the financial crisis which started 2008. The financial institution is a first step towards the establishment of a democratic world government, of which the EU can be a laboratory.

Private financial career

In 1994, Jacques Attali founded Attali & Associates (A&A), an international advisory firm which specializes in strategy consulting, corporate finance and venture capital to help companies develop on the long run.

In 2012 Jacques Attali became a member of the Supervisory board of Kepler Capital Markets, a Swiss broker based in Geneva.

He also presides over the supervisory board of Slate.fr. The same year, Credit Agricole sold Cheuvreux, which employs about 700 people worldwide, to Kepler Capital Markets.

Music and arts

On 9 September 2010, Jacques Attali was appointed as a member of the directorate of the Musée d’Orsay.

Jacques Attali has a passion for music: he plays the piano (he once played for the association Les Restos du cœur), and wrote lyrics for Barbara. He is the author of the book Bruits (1977) (English: Noise: The Political Economy of Music), an essay which deals with the economy of music and the importance of music in the evolution of our societies.

In 1978, he got to play himself in Pauline et l'ordinateur, directed by Francis Fehr.

Since 2003, he directs the Grenoble University orchestra, open to amateurs, under Patrick Souillot. He performed very different pieces, which ranged from a symphony composed by Benda to Bach’s violin concertos, a mass composed by Mozart, Barber’s Adagio and Mendelssohn’s double concerto for violin, piano and orchestra. In 2012, he conducted the Musiques en scène orchestra, performing the opening of the Barber of Sevilla and co-directed the Lamoureux orchestra with his friend, the geneticist Daniel Cohen, during the gala of Technion university, in Paris. He also directed the Lausanne Sinfonietta in August and Ravel's Concerto in G with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Jerusalem and then in Paris. He also directed orchestra in Shanghai, Bondy, Marseille, London and Astana.

With Patrick Souillot, he created in 2012 a national organization following the model of the Fabrique Opéra Grenoble, which aims at coordinating the production of cooperative operas with the participation of students from vocational highschools.

Commission for the Liberation of French Growth, known as "Attali Commission"

On July the 24th, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy appoints Jacques Attali to chair a bipartisan commission charged with studying "the bottlenecks that constrain growth". It is composed of 42 members, freely appointed by Attali, mostly liberals and social democrats. Its unanimous report is handed over to the President on January the 23rd, 2008. It contains various recommandations to radically transform the French economy and society in order to unlock economic growth.

Commission for "Positive Economics"

In 2012, French President François Hollande ordered from Attali a report on the "Positive economics" situation. The aim of this report is to put an end to the short-termism, to move from an individualistic economy based on the short-term to an economy based on Public interest and the interest of future generations, to organize the transition from a old model based on the wealth economy to a model in which economic agents will have other obligations than Profit maximization. This report, written by a wide-ranging commission, proposes 44 reforms.