Laurence Parisot lives in the Sorbonne district, in the heart of the Latin quarter of central Paris. With her bicycle, soft voice and delicate manners, she might be thought a typical left-bank bourgeois bohemian – or bobo. But she differs from her neighbours in one important respect: she wants to bring a dose of capitalism to France.
As head of the Mouvement des Entreprises de France, or Medef, the equivalent of Britain's CBI business lobby, she represents nearly 1m companies. She has just been re-elected for a second term after four years of intense battling against the ancien régime.
Her victories include persuading President Sarkozy to go back on his 2007 promise not to reform the pension system. Three years on, the French assembly is debating whether to raise the retirement age by two years to 62. In her forthcoming term, she plans to help open up France to private medicine, in an effort to offset what she calls a decaying public sector.
Her task, in a traditionally anti-capitalist and anti-American country, is perhaps as hard as that of Joan of Arc – the 15th-century French heroine and Catholic martyr who took on the task of kicking out the English. Parisot grew up in the same region as Joan – Lorraine, in the east of the country.
"I would like to bring liberalism and capitalism to the French," Parisot says. "I have never changed my approach and I have been re-elected with these arguments."
Her goal is to give business a voice in France, and to make this lobby group more integrated in society and in decision-making, as it is in Britain, the US or Germany. "Many people in France think that enterprise and the state is more or less the same," she says. "We need to create more and more companies."
Speaking on a two-day visit to London to meet the CBI president Helen Alexander, Parisot says: "The British are much more in the reality of things. They are very lucid and pragmatic, whereas the French are in the world of ideas. We push very important ideas to the world, but we also postpone any decisions."
She is acutely aware of the thousands of young, entrepreneurial French citizens who have moved to Britain over the past few years in search of opportunity, mostly in financial services. France needs some of them back, she says. French businesses need to become more competitive and accepting of free international trade.
A big fight
Not everyone in France agrees. "My re-election in January and February was a big fight," Parisot says. "Some people wanted me to disappear, but in the end I got re-elected."
Opponents included "misogynists, top executives of top companies", she says. One particularly bitter battle was with Antoine Zacharias, former chief executive of the construction giant Vinci, who was awarded – but didn't get – a €130m golden parachute when he left the company in 2007. Parisot, who believes that "too much is too much", fought the case, and limits have now been imposed on executive payouts. "I was severe on very high compensation, especially when companies are in difficulties," she says.
Backing her up are the thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses that form Medef. Parisot believes these enterprises will get France out of the present crisis. Instead of debating whether government cuts are the way back to prosperity, the country should focus on the real issue, she says: how to generate growth.
Her goal is to make small and medium-sized businesses an integral part of a more democratic and fair society: "Businesses are at the beginning of everything, like in the fight against discrimination, much more than [is the case] in our schools or administration."
But of course, the capitalism that she postulates is capitalism à la français. "We're European, so our model will be different from the American model," she says. "In Europe, we have more ability to combine competitiveness with human values. We have to be competitive, but we'll always think that a human being is at the heart of enterprise."
The state should have a big role, she believes, providing education and health services. "And the rest, we'll take care of."
But a new model is needed, as the financial crisis, new technologies, the environmental threat and globalisation have changed the world.
"The main decisions aren't national any more, but international," Parisot says. "And they have to be taken by consensus – the majority versus minority model is not valid any more. Like in Britain now, with the coalition government, we have to adopt the habit of working together. Exchange will always work."
Parisot's capitalism is a form of consensual liberalism, where free trade comes with transparency, so people and organisations can make informed choices. Would big investment banks be part of her capitalist model?
"I don't want to put my finger on Goldman Sachs or any other bank," she says, "but in the financial sector, there was no transparency, but opacity."
Parisot tries to put her own ideas into practice, and will not start negotiations before there has been a diagnosis of the problem and the facts have been established. Her years in charge of Medef and chairing the French polling company Ifop have taught her that the keys to successful negotiation are patience and perseverance.
Paying off
Apart from the reform of her country's pension system, Parisot has pushed the séparation amiable, a new way of ending a contract between employer and employee, modelled on the concept of an amicable divorce.
Her battles are paying off. France, once the bastion of protected businesses, is now the fifth most attractive country in the world to start a company, according to a recent study by the accountancy firm Ernst & Young, and third in the ranking of countries according to their openness to foreign direct investment, after the US and China.
But more battles are ahead for her second term, including increasing women's representation on the boards of leading companies above the present 15%. "Some guys don't listen to what women say on a board, just because she's a woman," she says.
Backed by her experience as a board member at Michelin, the tyre-maker, and BNP Paribas, the Paris-based global banking group, she is planning a policy document about the issue.
Parisot works seven days a week, leaving her "no time" for children or a partner, although she travels as often as she can to the French Caribbean islands, such as Guadeloupe, to practise kite-surfing.
Otherwise, she's in charge – so much so, that some in France wished she had been the manager of the French national team during the World Cup: "Who's the boss here? I would have told them, just go to work!"
CV: Laurence Parisot
Age 50
Place of birth Luxeuil-les-Bains in Haute-Saône, France
Family background "Provincial, middle class," she says. Father and grandfather ran a furniture business
Education Master's degree in public law at the University of Nancy; Institut d'Études Politiques, in Paris
Career First woman to become president of Medef in 2005. Recently re-elected for a second term
Marital status Single, no children
Home Latin quarter, Paris
Favourite restaurant Brasserie Balzar near the Sorbonne
Hobbies Kite-surfing in the French Caribbean
Awards Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite (2003)