Today's Date:

His Excellency François BUJON de l'ESTANG

Born in 1940 at Neuilly sur Seine Mr. François BUJON de l'ESTANG is Ambassador of France. He is a graduate of the Institut Politique de Paris and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (Montesquieu Class, 1966).

After graduating from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), he chose a career with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs starting in June 1966 in the Office of the Permanent Secretary. In November 1966, he was assigned to the Elysée Palace as a special advisor on the staff of the President of the Republic. He was deputy to the President's Diplomatic Advisor and continued to work for General de Gaulle until the latter's resignation in April 1969.

He was then posted to the French Embassy in the United States where he remained from 1969 to 1973 serving as Second and then as First Secretary. While in Washington, he covered the Vietnam dossier and United States policies in Asia and the Far East. From 1973 to 1975, he was First Secretary and Second Counselor at the French Embassy in London, where he had special responsibility for European affairs and Great Britain's membership in the European Community.

At the end of 1975, he returned to Paris and was seconded to the Ministry of Industry as Advisor on International Affairs to the Delegate General for Energy. In this position, he helped prepare and conduct all international negotiations on energy policies and energy supplies for France, and in particular bilateral negotiations with the oil-exporting countries and the negotiations of the London Club of nuclear-technology-exporting countries.

On January 1, 1978, he joined the Atomic Energy Commissariat as Director of International Relations. From 1979 onwards he was also French representative on the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and a member of the Board of Directors of the companies SOFRATOME, TECHNICATOME and EURODIF.

In 1980, he rejoined Mr. André GIRAUD, former head of the Atomic Energy Commissariat who was by now Minister of Industry, and served as his Chief of Staff until the May 1981 presidential election. After the change of government, he returned to the Atomic Energy Commissariat and took advantage of this period of transition to attend the advanced Management Program -88th Session- at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.

In June 1982, the A.E.C. Group assigned him the task of reorganizing their industrial activities in the United States and launching an American subsidiary that would combine all the Group's activities in the United States and develop the production and export of French nuclear material and services. He created COGEMA Inc., a fully-owned subsidiary of COGEMA, and set up its offices in Washington D.C. Within four years, COGEMA Inc., after having acquired Pathfinder Mines Corporation, had become one of the main producers of natural uranium in the United States, had conquered a sizable share of the market of enrichment services for U.S electrical utilities and, with Babcock & Wilcox, had turned to the manufacturing and marketing of nuclear fuel assemblies.

Mr. François BUJON de l'ESTANG remained President and Chief Executive Officer of COGEMA Inc. until March 1986. Simultaneously, he served as a member of the Board of Directors of Copperweld Corporation (Imetal Group).

In March 1986, he returned to the diplomatic service and was appointed Ambassador to Mexico. However, he did not take up this post because Mr. Jacques CHIRAC, who had become Prime Minister after the March 1986 legislative election, asked him to be his Senior Advisor for Diplomatic Affairs, Defense and Cooperation, a position he held until the presidential election in May 1988.

Mr. François BUJON de l'ESTANG was then appointed Ambassador of France to Canada in January 1989, and held this office for three years until November 1991.

He then returned to Paris and to the private sector. He served as Senior Vice President with the Compagnie de Navigation Mixte (a French industrial and financial conglomerate with combined sales of about FF 30 billion) and Via Banque from November 1991 to October 1992, and simultaneously as Chairman and C.E.O. of S.F.I.M. (a high-technology electronics and aeronautics company with special expertise in avionics and optronics), where he received from the shareholders (Navigation Mixte and Framatome) a specific mandate for reorganizing and restructuring the company. Successfully completing this task by the end of October, he resigned his office on November 1, 1992, but remained a member of the Board of Directors of SFIM until September 1993. In December 1992, Mr. François BUJON de l'ESTANG created FBE International Consultants, a consulting firm specializing in international relations, policy risk analysis and government counseling. A member of the Board of Directors of Banque INDOSUEZ and the International Advisory Board of TOTAL, Mr. François BUJON de l'ESTANG was in addition, until his appointment in September 1995 as Ambassador of France to the United States, President of the Harvard Business School Club of France, a member of the Board of Directors of I.F.R.I. (Institut Français des Relations Internationales) and of the editorial board of the Revue des Deux Mondes. Mr. François BUJON de L'ESTANG presented his credentials to President CLINTON on December 12, 1995.

Officer of the Legion of Honor and Officer of the National Order of Merit, Mr. François BUJON de l'ESTANG is married to the former Anne de MARGERIE and is a father of four.