Alstom SA

Is Alstom publicly traded?
Yes. Alstom SA trades on Euronext Paris under ticker ALO.

Who owns Alstom?
Public shareholders, with Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec the largest. The French state no longer holds a significant stake.

Does Alstom own Bombardier trains?
Yes. It acquired Bombardier Transportation in January 2021, absorbing its train platforms, plants, and contracts.

Does Alstom make the TGV?
Yes. The TGV is built by Alstom within its Avelia high-speed family, including the new TGV M.

How big is Alstom?
19.2 billion euros in fiscal 2025/26 sales, 87,800 employees in 61 countries, and a record 104.4 billion euro backlog.

Who runs Alstom?
Henri Poupart-Lafarge is chairman and CEO, leading since 2016.

Alstom was formed in 1928 as Alsthom, merging the French operations of Thomson-Houston Electric with the Societe Alsacienne de Constructions Mecaniques, combining electrical engineering with Alsatian mechanical works. It built locomotives and power equipment through the mid-century industrial expansion.

Its defining product arrived in 1981: the TGV, the world's first dedicated high-speed train, which made France the global high-speed pioneer and Alsthom its industrial champion. The company diversified aggressively in the 1990s into power generation, transmission, and shipbuilding (including the Queen Mary 2), renamed itself Alstom in 1998, and listed publicly.

The 2003 to 2004 crisis nearly bankrupted it; a French state bailout and restructuring saved the company. A decade later it executed the sector's largest refocusing: the 2015 sale of its energy business to GE for about 12.4 billion euros left it a pure rail company rich in cash but strategically exposed.

It attempted a merger with Siemens Mobility, blocked by EU competition authorities in 2019, then pivoted to the alternative: acquiring Bombardier Transportation, closed in January 2021 for roughly 5.5 billion euros with Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec taking a stake. The deal delivered scale and a global footprint but also a portfolio of underperforming fixed-price contracts, including the UK Aventra program, that produced write-downs and a profit warning in 2024.

Through the mid-2020s Alstom ran a recovery program: divesting non-core assets, strengthening the balance sheet, and renegotiating inherited contracts. Fiscal 2025/26 confirmed the commercial rebound with record orders and backlog, even as management pushed a margin-recovery plan targeting about 6.5 percent adjusted EBIT in the following year.

Alstom is a structural sustainability leader among industrial companies: rail is the lowest-carbon motorized transport mode, and its product strategy reinforces that position with the Coradia iLint, the world's first commercial hydrogen passenger train, battery-electric trains, and energy-efficient designs across its range.

It publishes detailed sustainability reporting with science-based targets for its own operations and value chain, and it scores well on CDP assessments. Its "pure rail" positioning since the GE divestiture is both a business strategy and an ESG identity.

Alstom products regularly win Railway Gazette and industry innovation awards; its hydrogen iLint and Avelia platforms have received design and engineering recognition. The company appears on corporate sustainability indices including CAC 40 ESG-related listings and has received EcoVadis and CDP recognition at the top of its sector.

Alstom's defining modern scrutiny is the Bombardier contract inheritance: the UK Aventra program and other distressed fixed-price contracts generated a roughly 1.4 billion euro write-down and a 2024 profit warning that severely hit the share price and drew shareholder criticism of due diligence.

Historically, it resolved bribery investigations in the UK and US over legacy overseas conduct, paying substantial penalties, and its rail concentration drew EU antitrust conditions on the Bombardier deal itself. Labor relations involve continuous European works council negotiations over restructuring and site specialization. No unresolved material sanction is outstanding as of November 2026.