1/5/2015 12:41:00 AM
HEADLINES
PERSPECTIVE – French Fastener Manufacturer in Spotlight After Questioning President’s Business Policies
MEDIA SPOTLIGHT – After questioning the French president on business issues, a French fastener manufacturer has become a radio commentor, the BBC News Europe reported.
“A 46-year-old businesswoman who makes nuts and bolts for heavy industry has become a folk hero for disaffected French entrepreneurs after she gave a televised dressing-down to President Francois Hollande on the travails of running a company,” the BBC reported.
Karine Charbonnier-Beck was hailed for her bold role three weeks ago on Face aux Francais (Face to Face with the French), in which the president was questioned by members of the public.
Charbonnier-Beck’s denunciation of the French government’s business policies and her rejection of Hollande’s response made an instant hit.
After being inundated with mostly complimentary tweets and emails, she has been offered a regular slot on one of France’s leading radio chat-shows.
“I thought it was important to tell the president exactly what we have to go through as small business-owners,” she said in a BBC interview at the Beck Industries factory in Armentieres, on the Belgian border.
“When French people think about business, they automatically imagine rich tycoons and the CEOs of massive multinationals,” Charbonnier-Beck observed. “They don’t realize that most of the work is done at a much more humble level. After the broadcast I got so many messages from viewers saying how refreshing it was to hear things from a different angle.”
In the television program, she said that by moving a few kilometers across the border into Belgium, she could save Beck Industries €3m (US$3.7m) in taxes and charges annually and employees would have lower payroll taxes.
Charbonnier-Beck said not only had Hollande failed to live up to his promise to simplify red tape, but there there had been “complexification.” She called for reform of the French trade union system.
She was disappointed by Hollande’s television responses. “I didn’t have the feeling he was listening to anything I said,” Charbonnier-Beck told the BBC. “The answers had nothing to do with my questions.”
Charbonnier-Beck is the fourth generation of her family to run Beck Industries since it was started in 1919 in a town destroyed in World War I. A decade ago Chadrbonnier-Beck and her husband, Hugues Charbonnier, took over the reins from her father.
Today the company owns factories at Aberdeen and Wolverhampton in the UK and in Belgium and Germany. The factories employ 700 and produce bolts and fastenings for the oil, gas and nuclear power industries.
“We have been very impressed by the British approach to business,” Hugues Charbonnier said. “It is so very different from the French way.”
“In France we are very good at mastering a core of competences and really excelling at them,” he added. “But in the UK there is always the desire to move on, to try something new. Probably the perfect world would involve a synthesis of the two approaches.”
“We know we are a very good company,” she told the BBC. “But we need to invest if we are to stay ahead of the competition. And the only way we can do that is if we start making more profits. That means there have to be lower charges.”
Editor’s Note: Articles in Media Spotlight are excerpts from publications or broadcasts, which show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies.
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