Born in 1947 in Tunis, Alain Boublil was educated in Paris. He attended Cours Hattemer, Lycée Claude Bernard and Lycée Carnot.
He told the story of his family who has French and Tunisian origins and Brazilian ties in one of his books, Le Soulèvement du Sérail (Albin Michel, 1990).
He holds an MA in mathematics and a postgraduate degree from the Faculty of Sciences of Paris (1969 and 1970). He graduated from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris (1971), “Public Service section”, and he holds a doctorate in Economics (1978).
He was appointed Assistant of Mathematics and Statistics at the Faculty of Law and Economics of Nanterre in 1970. In 1973, he became director of studies at the Information Office for Economic Forecast.
He then joined Jacques Attali and the team of economists advising François Mitterrand and he participated in the presidential campaign of 1974. He joined the Socialist Party in 1975, specializing in issues related to housing and industrial policy.
He participated in the discussions with the Communist Party held to update the “Programme Commun” in 1977.
In 1979, under the pseudonym of Antoine Laurent, he became the delegate of the First Secretary in charge of economic issues and co-secretary with Louis Gallois of the economic Committee of the Socialist Party.
Meanwhile, in 1977, he was appointed chargé de mission in the industrial service of the Commissariat au Plan. He was in charge of the Eighth Plan preparation work for construction and technological change.
Following the election of François Mitterrand in 1981, he was appointed technical advisor to the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic. He was in charge of industry, transport and housing.
In May 1988, he was called by Pierre Bérégovoy to become chief of staff in the Ministry of Finance. In January 1989, following the press campaign resulting from the Pechiney case that named him directly, he decided to resign and to sue for defamation several journals.
He then was appointed advisor by the Minister of Finance. The French government entrusted several reports to him, including one on the impact of new technologies on financial markets (1989), and a second after the fall of the Berlin wall, dealing with the consequences of German reunification for the French economy (1990).
In July 1991, he was appointed Deputy CEO of Framatome. He was in charge of strategy, research and technological development.
Meanwhile (1990), the government appointed him Director of Usinor Sacilor. The chairman of General Electric, Jack Welch, asked him to sit in the European Advisory Council he had just created. The Minister of Finance gave his consent, he accepted and he sat until 1995. In 1992, this board became the International Advisory Board of General Electric.
In 1993, shortly after the suicide of Pierre Bérégovoy, the new government asked him to leave his positions on the Board of Usinor Sacilor and at Framatome. He created in 1994, AB 2000, the consulting company he is still leading today.
Besides the works written before his appointment at the Palais de l’Elysée, Alain Boublil published in 1996 Keynes Reviens! Ils sont devenus fous, in 1997 Le Siècle des Chinois and in 2006 Le Monde tel qu’il est.
He shared in these three books his analysis and reflections on the evolution of the global economy. In 2014, he published Le Nouvel Etat-Stratège at Editions de l’Archipel in which he analyses the situation of the French economy, and proposes to redefine the State’s role in an open economy and in the age of globalization.