Résumé
During the postwar years up until the 1980s, the French state took on an important share of corporate financing through a network of development-oriented public financial institutions. Following the neoliberal turn, this administered mode of financing disappeared or was marginalized. Yet, some administered financial institutions survived and even thrived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This article focuses on the continuities and the transformations of public investment, of its operators and of its circuits, through the case study of a specific institution, Proparco. Established in 1977 for the purpose of providing financing to private corporations in the Global South, this public-private development finance institution was placed under the joint tutelage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance. The article first examines the professional norms that organized and delimitated the space of administered finance. It then analyzes the careers and daily operations within Proparco as a way to trace, from the ground up, the specific history of this institution. Finally, the last section addresses the financialization of administered finance by analyzing both the pathways of its diffusion and the internal tensions it generates.