Bouygues

Bouygues was founded in 1952 by Francis Bouygues, amid the reconstruction of France in the aftermath of the Second World War, to construct new buildings. Within its first two decades of operation, the company secured considerable work from the French government across several different reconstruction programmes. These included the construction of new social housing starting in 1955, the building out of the French motorway system during the 1960s, and the securing of several high-profile contracts for specific buildings, including the Parc des Princes stadium, the Palais des congrès de Paris shopping mall, and Charles de Gaulle Airport amongst others.

In 1970, Bouygues was listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. In the following decade, the company endeavoured to develop an international presence as well as to diversify its activities. Furthermore, during the mid 1980s, Bouygues acquired several other domestic engineering and construction companies, including Screg, Sacer, and Colas; which was later reorganised as Colas Group. In 1987, the company started operating the television channel TF1. One year later, Bouygues moved into its new head office, the Challenger complex, in Saint-Quentin en Yvelines.

On 29 May 1996, the company launched Bouygues Télécom as France's third mobile telephone operator. In the early 2000s, it was decided to refocus Bouygues's activities around the construction, telecoms and media markets. In relation to this strategic direction, the firm divested Bouygues Offshore to the Italian oil services specialist Saipem in 2002, as well as Saur to French private equity company PAI Partners in exchange for €1bn in November 2004. During June 2006, the company acquired 23.26 percent of the French industrial conglomerate Alstom.

In 2008, Bouygues Telecom launched its first fixed line service; at the time, it had 9 million customers and 7,700 employees. In 2010, through its subsidiary Nerem Telecom, Bouygues acquired HGT Telecom in exchange for $170 million from Henri Benezra and his brother Avi.

In June 2014, consecutively to Alstom's cession of its Energy activities to General Electric, Bouygues granted a call option to the French government, allowing it to acquire a maximum of 20 percent of Alstom, currently owned by the group. In June 2015, Bouygues publicly rejected an €10bn bid submitted by the Luxembourg-based telecoms firm Altice to purchase Bouygues Télécom from it.

In May 2018, the company purchased the Australian construction company A. W. Edwards. In December 2019, Bouygues became a shareholder in Flying Whales, a French company developing rigid-structure airships for heavy-lift transport as part of a consortium of industrial investors including Groupe ADP and Air Liquide.

In November 2021, Bouygues acquired the technical services business, Equans from Engie in a transaction worth €7.1bn.

The company carries out the following businesses:

Construction

Bouygues Construction (100% share): construction, public works, energy & services, with a presence in 80 countries worldwide

Colas Group (96.8% share): roadworks, construction, railways and maintenance

Bouygues Immobilier (100% share): residential, corporate, commercial and hotel real estate and urban development, property development

Controversies

Bid rigging

In September 2023, Bouygues Construction Expertises Nucléaires (BCEN) was fined €6.2 million after the French competition regulator found them guilty, along with five other companies, of bid rigging over tenders for work at the Marcoule nuclear site.

Bouygues (UK) Ltd. v Dahl-Jensen (UK) Ltd.

In this UK construction adjudication matter, the company's UK subsidiary had terminated the employment of its mechanical sub-contractor, Dahl-Jensen (UK). The adjudicator made a mistake in calculating outstanding payments due to Dahl-Jensen, which led to a Court of Appeal ruling in 2002 which stated that... when an Adjudicator makes an error in calculating an amount payable to a party, the effect of which is to pay monies which are not due under the contract, that decision would not be void provided the Adjudicator had answered the issue that has been asked of him.

Flamanville

Between 2009 and 2011, Bouygues S.A. was illegally employing workers from Poland and Romania exposing them to inhuman working conditions at the construction site of the Flamanville nuclear power plant in Normandy. The company was later condemned for their practices before the court in Cherbourg and was ordered to pay sanctions of between €25,000 and €29,950.

Cyberattack on Bouygues Construction SA

On 30 January 2020, a ransomware-type virus was detected on Bouygues Construction's computer network although operational activity on the construction sites was disrupted. The "Maze Ransomware Gang" claimed responsibility for the attack and posted a 1.2 GB file that allegedly contained data taken from Bouygues Construction.