Self-Finance Until the World Is Too Small, Then Debt-Fund Continental Conquest

“For twenty years, he was the chief architect of Michelin’s international development. Without him, the company would probably never have dared to take the considerable financial risks it did by going into debt (having previously only grown through self-financing). It would not have launched large eurocurrency loans and convertible bond issues that succeeded each other in the sixties and seventies, nor organized an entire financial structure in Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Netherlands to manage its international cash flow.”

“A new and perhaps decisive element: in 1967, Michelin presented the ZX, more universal than the X and better suited to the powerful and fast cars of those vroom-vroom times. A boost in programs: five new factories in 1971 on the European continent; Bamberg, Hamburg, Trier in Germany, Fossano, Alessandria, Turin (Stura) in Italy. In 1972, seven factories. By 1974, Michelin had forty-five factories around the world and its production had quintupled in fifteen years. L’Express hailed Michelin as “one of the greatest builders of the Western world.””