Who Owns Alstom?

Alstom's roots are French industrial history: it formed in 1928 as Alsthom from the merger of Thomson-Houston Electric's French arm and the Societe Alsacienne de Constructions Mecaniques, building locomotives and electrical equipment in Alsace. Through the postwar decades it became France's flagship heavy engineer, responsible for the TGV, the world's first purpose-built high-speed train, which entered service in 1981 and made the company synonymous with fast rail.

As Alstom it diversified into power generation, grid equipment, and marine engineering through the 1990s. The company nearly failed in 2003 and 2004, requiring a French state rescue, and spent the following decade divesting: grid went to Areva and then GE's rivals, and in 2015 it sold its entire energy business to General Electric for about 12.4 billion euros, becoming a pure rail company.

The defining move of the modern era was the Bombardier Transportation acquisition, completed in January 2021 for roughly 5.5 billion euros after EU concessions. The deal made Alstom the world's number two rail maker overnight, adding metros, regional trains, and signalling at global scale, but also a backlog of troubled contracts, particularly its UK Aventra order, that depressed profitability through the mid-2020s.

Under CEO Henri Poupart-Lafarge the company spent 2021 to 2026 working through those inherited contracts, raising capital to repair the balance sheet, and restoring cash flow. Fiscal 2025/26, ended March 2026, delivered record order intake of 27.6 billion euros, sales of 19.2 billion euros, net profit of 324 million euros, and a record 104.4 billion euro backlog, with a margin recovery program underway for the following year.