In 1978, Bourdieu and Saint Martin wrote a famous study, “Le patronat,” based on extensive correspondence analysis of the French corporate elite. In this paper, we go back to their notion of “field of economic power” and apply their methodology to the 838 executive and non-executive directors of the CAC 40 firms in 2009. Rather than the types of capitalism, our analysis highlights the force of national tropes (titles and careers linked to the French state, and passage via the grandes écoles), at the very moment when we hear of the effacement of family capitalism and a great openness toward the international.