Top 100 Executives 2021 – Gilles Grapinet (CEO) Worldline

Gilles Grapinet has the typical background of a great French boss, in the noble sense of the term. A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, he worked in the public sector before embarking on a career in the private sector. These different lives went hand in hand with some wonderful encounters that took him far and wide before he became CEO at Worldline, where he certainly proved himself worthy.

Grapinet, who spent his childhood in Africa, where he likes to return whenever he can, attended school in La Flèche in the Sarthe region, located south west of Paris. After earning a master's degree in public law at the University of Aix-Marseille, he passed the ENA entrance exam, where he was a member of the Condorcet class. Upon graduation, he joined the prestigious Inspectorate of Finance, through which Emmanuel Macron, Nicolas Dufourcq (CEO of Bpifrance), Stéphane Richard and Frédéric Oudéa (respectively heads of Orange and Société Générale) have passed.

After working for the General Tax Directorate and the Ministry of the Budget, Gilles Grapinet became the economic and financial affairs advisor to the then Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. He then returned to Bercy, as chief of staff to Hervé Gaymard and then to Thierry Breton. "This was a period of extraordinary human and professional richness," he explained to French business daily Les Echos. "It was also a difficult time because, at Bercy, we had to deal with almost constant political adversity."

From Crédit Agricole to Atos
Now a father of three, and with the 2007 presidential election leading to numerous changes in the cabinet, Gilles Grapinet, a noted strategist and leader of men, decided to put his experience to good use in the private sector. At Crédit Agricole, this workaholic was in charge of strategy and then of the payment systems and services activity, the specialty of his current company Worldline. Gilles Grapinet then joined Atos. Under the leadership of Thierry Breton for several years, he was deputy CEO in charge of the group's global functions.

In the six years since he became CEO, Worldline's capitalization jumped by more than 300%

In 2014, Atos subsidiary Worldline, a specialist in online payment and transactional services, was listed on the stock exchange. CEO of the entity since the previous year, Gilles Grapinet gained further autonomy. In nearly six years, the capitalization of his company jumped by more than 300%, thus exceeding the value of its former shareholder.

In 2018, it became the first payment company to neutralize its CO2 emissions. This achievement was made possible by a CSR program started three years earlier and aimed at the energy efficiency of the group's data centers, offices and payment terminals. Since then, Worldline has been providing carbon neutral solutions to its customers.

Then came Ingenico
In early 2020, the boss announced some big news: the acquisition of Ingenico for €7.8 billion. With the payment terminals specialist part of the group, Worldline is now the fourth largest player in its sector worldwide. According to the Boston Consulting Group and Swift, revenues generated by electronic payments could reach $2.4 trillion by 2027. While the share of the pie continues to grow, the big players are in the starting blocks and the fintechs are just waiting to grow. Hence the need for companies such as Worldline to structure themselves in order to be present on all transactions.

Nothing is out of reach for Gilles Grapinet, who the current governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, described a few years ago in Les Echos as being "a proponent of reform and movement". Only in his fifties, Grapinet still has many years ahead of him to continue shaping an essential part of the 21st century economy.