Interestingly this is about Gemalto, a company with a remarkable history.
Remember times when the USofA wasn't adopting the smart card technology ? Well it had something to do with this chip technology (crypto) being a foreign technology which coincidently was the propriety of the French company Gemplus.
At the turn of the millenium an US investment funds (Texas Pacific Group) managed to find its way in Gemplus capital after a couple denials, which is the start what is known in France as l'affaire Gemplus. To summarize instead of helping to conquer the US market, TPG used its power to change the board of director (and choose Alex Mandl as the head), initiated rounds of layoff and moved the R&D to the US to take control of the sought after technology.
Remember times when the USofA wasn't adopting the smart card technology ? Well it had something to do with this chip technology (crypto) being a foreign technology which coincidently was the propriety of the French company Gemplus.
At the turn of the millenium an US investment funds (Texas Pacific Group) managed to find its way in Gemplus capital after a couple denials, which is the start what is known in France as l'affaire Gemplus. To summarize instead of helping to conquer the US market, TPG used its power to change the board of director (and choose Alex Mandl as the head), initiated rounds of layoff and moved the R&D to the US to take control of the sought after technology.
The whole thing is shown to be an operation of the C.I.A. through In-Q-Tel to take control of the chip card technology and possibly insert backdoors before exporting. Slow to react, it takes several years for the french government to create its own version of In-Q-Tel called "Fonds Stratégique d'Investissement" and try to reclaim Gemplus, now Gemalto, by becoming the majority stakeholder with 8% of shares in 2009, a move that happens too late and TPG having gotten what they wanted sells its share a year later.