Cyberattacks, acquisitions: the government detected nearly 600 “foreign threats” targeting French companies in 2022, according to the annual report of the General Directorate of Enterprise (DGE), published on Wednesday, January 18.
“The inter-ministerial economic security platform detected and processed 588 alerts on external threats during the first 10 months of 2022, more than in all of 2021,” writes the DGE, attached to the Ministry of Economy.
While the ministry is also responsible for industrial and digital sovereignty since the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, 40% of the threats detected last year (ie around 235 threats) were linked to attempts to “anticipate sensitive data and technologies “, the same proportion (40%) related to “capital operations”.
The rest of the alerts handled by the government were divided between cyberattacks on “neural infrastructures” (10%, around 60 threats) and “legal risks linked to the exposure of French companies to foreign legislation with extraterritorial scope,” according to the report.
reinforced controls
These figures are published almost two weeks after the government announced its desire to perpetuate the tightened control of foreign investment implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The threshold to activate the control of foreign investments in France will be definitively set at 10% of the shareholding, instead of 25%,” the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, declared at the time.
With this mechanism, any non-European investor who exceeds the threshold of 10% of the voting rights of a strategic listed company must notify Bercy. The ministry can then decide on a deeper examination, or even block the operation if it considers it contrary to French interests.
Despite this reinforced monitoring, 124 acquisitions or foreign acquisitions of French companies were authorized after the control in 2022. Just over half (68) “were authorized with conditions imposed on the investor to protect the sovereign interests” of France, it is detailed. in the report. .
Source: BFM TV
