Jean-Christophe MARTIN

Economic Security Expert – Strategic M&A – Aerospace, Space & Defense Specialist

Jean-Christophe MARTIN is a strategic advisor to international industrial groups and serves as Senior Advisor to investment firms and global private equity funds (on both buy-side and sell-side transactions). He is an expert in strategic mergers and acquisitions and has been active for 40 years in the security, defense, space, and aerospace sectors.

Strategic advisor / Senior Advisor

For the past seven years, Jean-Christophe MARTIN has served as a Strategic Advisor and Senior Advisor to international industrial companies and investment funds, with a particular focus on security-related matters. From 2019 to 2024, he was also an independent member of the supervisory board of Avisa Partners, and later of Forward Global.

Previously, Jean-Christophe spent eight years as Senior Advisor and Defense, Space, and Aerospace Counselor to top-level government bodies in France, including the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, and the Ministry of the Armed Forces. In this capacity, he handled strategic matters for leading companies in the sector and was involved in the review of over 150 foreign investment control cases (IEF – Investissements Étrangers en France).

Prior to that, he served for eight years as a Senior Security Advisor at the European Commission in Brussels. He chaired the European “Signal Task Force” and led the negotiation of a landmark agreement between Europe and the United States, opening a $200 billion market over 20 years to European companies.

Jean-Christophe was also a senior auditor (Rapporteur Général) at the French Court of Auditors, where he oversaw civil aviation for six years. He reviewed the Air France–KLM merger and identified a loss of over €2 billion for the French state.

He began his career in 1986 as a research engineer in a Ministry of the Armed Forces research laboratory, where he worked for over a decade on strategic deep-tech technologies.

Honors and Education

Jean-Christophe became a Defense Procurement Engineer (“Ingénieur de l’Armement”) through competitive examination in 1994 and was later promoted to Chief Engineer (“Ingénieur en chef de l’Armement”) in 2001. He graduated as an engineer in 1986 from ENSTA Brest, part of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and also studied at INPG (Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble).

He is an alumnus of ESCP Business School Paris (STEGE program, 1996), and holds a postgraduate degree in Defense Law from Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II (1988)

Jean-Christophe is a Knight of the French National Order of Merit, an honor recognizing his contributions to public service and strategic sectors.

Teachning

Jean-Christophe has taught for over 30 years in engineering schools, universities, and professional institutions, including SAE (Société des Amis de l’ENSTA Paris), ENSAE Toulouse, ENSTA Brest, ESIGELEC Rouen, CNAM Vernon, and the Master’s program in International Project Management (MPI) at Sorbonne Nouvelle University – Paris 3.

Publication

Authored articles for global conferences of the ION (Institute of Navigation) in his capacity as Chair of the European Commission’s “Signal Task Force.”
Co-author of the Handbook of Space Security (Springer, New York 2015 and Springer, Switzerland 2020).