The Compagnie des Alpes (CDA) was founded in 1989 in a very specific context. It is the direct heir to the Plan Neige, a development policy launched in the 1960s and 1970s to develop large ski resorts “from scratch” at high altitudes. Jean-Pierre Sonois, founder of CDA, speaks of an “extraordinary utopia” that consisted of France building resorts where “there was nothing,” above 1,800 meters, on virgin mountain pastures. During the Trente Glorieuses (the thirty glorious years of economic growth in France), skiing was booming, with demand increasing by 5 to 10% per year. The economic model of these new resorts was then heavily based on real estate. Until the mid-1980s, everything seemed to be going well for these innovative resorts.
The turning point came with the 1987 crisis. A real estate crash, combined with high interest rates, brought the construction boom to an abrupt end. “Banks no longer wanted to carry the inventory, and we found ourselves in a total breakdown,” recalls Jean-Pierre Sonois, referring to a major financing and development crisis. Several ski resort operators found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy. It was in this critical context that the Compagnie des Alpes was created, under the impetus of the Caisse des Dépôts (the financial arm of the French government). From the outset, the mission was clear: to save struggling resorts in order to preserve economic activity in the mountains.
Three early resorts symbolize this genesis: Tignes, Les Arcs and Les Menuires, where the financial situation was untenable at the end of the 1980s. The Compagnie des Alpes, founded in January 1989, thus emerged as a public lifeline. The Caisse des Dépôts, through its tourism subsidiary 3D (Développement des Dépôts), initially held more than 50% of the capital. Jean-Pierre Sonois took the helm, drawing on his management experience at Les Arcs, and went on to shape the young company with his vision.
Changing role of the CDA: from a rescue tool to a structured operator
Although the CDA was initially a public rescue mechanism, its role evolved rapidly during the 1990s. Under the leadership of Jean-Pierre Sonois, the company embraced the idea of becoming a truly structured industrial operator in the sector. “The idea was to create a specialized group to manage a group of ski areas, which are intensely capital-intensive businesses with very high fixed costs,” explains David Ponson, director of the Mountain and Outdoor Activities Division of Compagnie des Alpes, about the founder’s vision. Before the CDA, no entity specialized in operating multiple resorts: each resort was managed separately by local private companies or by a municipality. Jean-Pierre Sonois saw the crisis as an opportunity to create a specialized group capable of pooling resources and achieving critical mass.
The decade that transformed French skiing
From its early years, Compagnie des Alpes embarked on a path of sustained external growth. Between 1989 and the early 2000s, it successively acquired numerous ski resort companies—almost one per year for ten years. After Tignes, Les Arcs, and Les Menuires, other flagship resorts joined the group. La Plagne, for example, became part of CDA in the early 1990s, followed by leading resorts in Savoie, Haute-Savoie (Grand Massif), Hautes-Alpes (Serre-Chevalier) and Isère over the decade. Each acquisition was an opportunity to restructure the operation of the resorts that had been bought out.
Jean-Pierre Sonois is pursuing a clear strategy: retain assets directly related to skiing and sell off the rest. He explains that this refers to the assets and holdings of the Caisse des Dépôts in the mountains, which he inherited as a “nest egg” to kick-start his project. “We sold everything, the hotels, the residences…” he says, referring to this diverse portfolio of various holdings from the CDC.
The initial integrated model gave way to a model more focused on the core business, which “absolutely had to become profitable”: ski lifts, ski pass sales, and certain services for skiers. This transition, carried out smoothly in partnership with local authorities, made CDA a solid and structured group by the end of the 1990s.
The three “strategic pillars”
When Compagnie des Alpes was founded in 1989, Jean-Pierre Sonois laid the foundations for a clear business model based on three strategic pillars that are still valid more than thirty years later. The first was based on snow guarantee: CDA focused its investments on resorts located above 1,800 meters altitude to ensure snow cover and a five-month season, which are essential for the profitability of the resorts and the sustainability of the territories.
The second pillar is that of critical mass: each resort had to have accommodation capacity of between 12,000 and 15,000 tourist beds and real estate potential thanks to its land holdings. It should be noted that CDA companies were development companies at the time: SMA (Société des Montagnes de l’ARC), Société d’Aménagement de la Plagne (SAP), Société Immobilière des Belleville, etc., which included the ski areas.
The third pillar, that of international openness, reflected the forward-thinking vision: a resort can only develop sustainably if it attracts enough foreign customers to ensure its economic stability through global recognition.
These three criteria—altitude, development, and influence—still form the basis for analyzing acquisitions and partnerships at Compagnie des Alpes. The recent example of the municipality of Pralognan-la-Vanoise, which chose CDA to steer its future, illustrates this perfectly: Climsnow studies confirm the sustainability of snow cover, the resort has a solid base of around 10,000 tourist beds, and its increasingly international clientele shows a strong attachment to the resort by investing directly in its economic and real estate fabric.
An integrated industrial model: consolidation, profitability, and diversification
At the end of the 1990s, the Compagnie des Alpes changed course without denying its origins. David Ponson summarizes this transition:
“The initial purpose was to help resorts in difficulty; today’s purpose is to be a profitable group, an expert in leisure, capable of growing and supporting significant investments.”
By transforming itself into an industrial operator in the leisure sector, Compagnie des Alpes became profitable with 100 million francs in revenue. Ways had to be found to finance further growth. The company then opened up to the financial markets: in November 1994, CDA was listed on the second market in Paris “to raise equity capital to support the development and heavy structural investments of the business.” This listing, with an initial capitalization of around €395 million, strengthened its ability to invest and consolidate its position as the sector leader. A decade later, in 2004, the French government decided to sell part of its shares, resulting in the partial privatization of the group and marking the end of majority control by the public authorities. However, Caisse des Dépôts remained the reference shareholder (we will come back to this later).
From the 2000s onwards, Compagnie des Alpes went beyond simply consolidating French ski areas. Under the leadership of Jean-Pierre Sonois and then his successors, it embarked on a strategic diversification into the leisure park sector. 2002 was a pivotal year: CDA acquired the Grévin & Cie group, which owns Parc Astérix, among other attractions. This operation, described as the “first major diversification,” propelled CDA into the world of amusement parks and leisure museums. The group’s portfolio quickly expanded internationally, incorporating the Walibi parks in Belgium and the Netherlands, Family Park in Austria, and more recently a site in Germany. At the same time, CDA also operates the Futuroscope park in France and other leisure parks.
This solidity has not come without challenges. The Covid-19 crisis was a major turning point: for nearly 18 months, Compagnie des Alpes recorded no commercial activity, with its ski resorts and leisure parks completely shut down. Despite government support, the group had to raise €230 million in capital to secure its recovery and preserve jobs. All shareholders—institutional, banking, and regional—backed the operation without hesitation, once again demonstrating their confidence in CDA’s business model and governance.
The group now presents itself as a European leisure operator, active in two large complementary sectors: ski resorts and leisure parks. “Our strategic positioning… is Europe,” emphasizes David Ponson. In the space of thirty years, Compagnie des Alpes has risen to the top of both sectors. Today, it operates a dozen of France’s largest ski resorts and around fifteen internationally renowned leisure parks. The group, which has exceeded €1 billion in annual revenue in recent years, has more than 6,000 employees and is generating strong growth in profits.
CDA shareholders firmly rooted in the Alpine regions
Despite its growth and opening up to financial markets, Compagnie des Alpes retains a shareholder base rooted in mountain regions. In 2025, Caisse des Dépôts remains the reference shareholder with nearly 43% of the capital. Alongside it are regional institutional partners: Crédit Agricole des Savoie (∼7%), ANAT – Société Alpes du Nord Aménagement Touristique, which brings together the interests of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, the Department of Savoie and a regional banking pool – (∼6%), as well as two regional banks – Banque Populaire Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (∼5%) and CERA – Caisse d’Épargne Auvergne Rhône-Alpes (∼3%). In total, nearly two-thirds of the capital is held by investors from the Rhône-Alpes region (local authorities, banks, local players). The remainder is divided between French institutional investors (approx. 10%), foreign institutional investors (10%) and individual shareholders (15%) – the latter often being residents of the region (including 3% of the group’s employees).
This local membership shapes the CDA’s economic model and how it is perceived by the public. Contrary to the image of a “large Parisian group listed on the stock exchange,” Compagnie des Alpes emphasizes its role as a long-term regional partner. “Big things scare people,” admits David Ponson, aware that the size of the group sometimes arouses mistrust in the valleys. Nevertheless, he refutes the idea of a “financial octopus” draining wealth to the capital. In reality, David Ponson points out, “three-quarters” of CDA’s shareholders are public or regional institutions, which reinvest most of the dividends they receive in their local areas.
The Compagnie des Alpes’ business model is now based on two pillars: mountains and leisure activities, which gives it robustness. The ski business, which is still highly seasonal, is balanced by the leisure parks, which are more spread out over the year. Historically, CDA generated 95% of its revenue in winter and 5% in summer, which resulted in heavy losses for six months that ate into the winter profits. The diversification process undertaken over the past 20 years has tended to smooth out this seasonality. This strategy is reflected in its ability to maintain a solid level of investment and profitability throughout the year, while remaining faithful to its original vocation: to become a profitable industrial leisure group and ski area operator. “We are focused on our territory, where we create value,” summarizes David Ponson, adding that the group’s financial success “gives it the ability to invest in an intensely capital-intensive environment with a high concentration of mountain suppliers.” He emphasizes the need to control not only prices, but all costs, through increased centralization of purchasing and optimized management of energy expenditure, which has become a strategic lever for competitiveness.
Thinking differently about mountains
The Compagnie des Alpes is now shifting its mission and practices towards a more holistic vision: that of a regenerative mountain, where the local economy, the environment, and social ties enrich each other. It is no longer just a question of “reducing the impact” of human activities at high altitude, but of actively contributing to the restoration and resilience of mountain areas.
The first challenge of this transition naturally concerns the climate. Global warming calls into question the sustainability of certain resorts and requires the invention of a more sober and circular model. Aware of these issues, the CDA has adopted an ambitious low-carbon strategy, embodied by its “net zero carbon by 2030” target for the operation of its ski areas.
This development is accompanied by broader reflection on the inhabited and living mountain. The CDA is rethinking alpine tourism as a sustainable territorial ecosystem, where tourist flows are balanced, infrastructure interacts with the landscape, and human activity supports biodiversity. “Pralognan is a ski area… almost balanced between summer and winter, where skiing has a future (the ClimSnow study establishes a long-term perspective),” explains David Ponson about Pralognan-la-Vanoise. This village in the Vanoise, which has just entrusted the CDA with the management of its ski area for 25 years, is emblematic of this strategy. Nicknamed “little Chamonix,” Pralognan has great potential for summer activities (hiking, mountaineering, mountain biking, etc.) from June to September. The CDA plans to turn it into a “summer-winter” experience destination. Already, at the group level, summer activities in all resorts have seen their turnover double in four years.
More than thirty years after its creation, the Compagnie des Alpes remains a unique player in the Alpine landscape. For many, its name evokes a large group, sometimes perceived as distant or financial. In reality, CDA is above all a company born out of a mission of general interest: to save resorts in difficulty at the end of the 1980s, at a time when many of them were threatened with closure. It is from this public vocation, supported by the Caisse des Dépôts, that it draws its DNA: investing in, structuring, and sustaining French ski areas. Since then, the group has undergone profound changes. It has learned to combine economic requirements with regional responsibility, relying on a rigorous industrial model that remains firmly rooted in the local community.
