Abstract
In the post-war period, state holdings may have appeared to be governed by different rules to the free market. Some, such as EDF, France Télécom or SNCF, even became symbols of public service although profit-making already constrained their governance. From the 1990s onwards, the figure of the shareholding state emerged as an attempt to rationalize the ways of governing public companies through instruments and practices derived from finance. This rationalization influences the objectives pursued by the state. Indeed, operators of public shareholdings seek, conceptually and operationally, to align the tools of profit and the market with the general interest in a context of financialization of the economy and rationalization of the state. These transformations reveal the dominant conception of the economy and state intervention among economic policymakers.