Context On March 20, 2025, the Ministers of the Armed Forces and Economy and Finance called on private investors and banking networks to mobilize in support of the defense industry, to preserve France’s strategic autonomy and sovereignty.
United once again at the initiative of Ministers Catherine Vautrin and Roland Lescure, financial actors and industrialists took stock of this unprecedented year of mobilization.
One year after the mobilization call, defense industry financing has undergone profound changes
The financing of French defense companies by major banking groups, historically high, experienced a significant acceleration, increasing by +26% in 2025 to reach 46.6 billion euros. The clarification of banks’ exclusion policies favored the increase in financing volumes for security and defense. The full compatibility of investments in the defense sector with the European sustainable finance framework was clearly reaffirmed in an opinion of the European Commission on December 30, 2025.
The event confirmed a collective awareness: faced with the imperative of rearmament, the Minister of the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs noted that “the factory has become the new weapon.” The planned increase in defense budgets, embodied in the updating of the Military Programming Law (LPM), requires private investments to boost the strengthening of the industrial tool, increase production rates, and support innovation development.
The French armament dynamic is part of a movement on the European continent. The challenge is twofold: to respond to the operational urgency while building an Integrated and Resilient European Defense Industrial and Technological Base (BITD).
The dialogue continues
Representatives of banks, insurers, and defense industry have enhanced their relations over the past year. The Ministry of the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs provides a framework and acts as a trusted third party to maintain these relations, support the innovation and development ecosystem, ensure fair value sharing. This framework will be strengthened by promoting the objective of preserving treasury in the defense industry value chain.
The Defense Investors Club, launched on June 23, 2025, embodies the ministry’s ambition: familiarize current and potential financiers with the specifics of the BITD and enable companies to understand the constraints of the financing ecosystem.
Additionally, the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industrial, Energy, and Digital Sovereignty contributes to strengthening the links between financial, defense, and innovation ecosystems by calling on major defense sector principals to become partners in the Tibi initiative dedicated to innovation financing, with a phase 3 set to be launched in the spring, following phases 1 and 2 between 2019 and 2026.
Access to financial markets, illustrated on the same day as the conclusions of the market dialogue by the announcement of the listing on the LiSE blockchain platform of ST Group company, a BITD company, supplier of the Rafale, is also a financing route for mid-sized companies in the BITD, increasing the mobilization of savings towards financing the productive economy.
