How it started
Development of Parisian airports
The company L'aéroport de Paris was created as a établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial in 1945. In 1946, the first provisional terminal at Orly Airport was achieved, as well as the reconstruction of Paris–Le Bourget Airport. In the 1950s, Orly Airport outgrew Le Bourget's traffic, and became the leading Parisian airport, breaking the 1 million passengers/year milestone. Le Bourget launched the first edition of the Paris Air Show in 1953 and switched to business jet operations in 1976.
In 1957, L'aéroport de Paris started to look for a land to build a new Parisian airport. Construction of the airport started in 1966 and Charles de Gaulle Airport officially started its operations in March 1974. In 1976, 20 million passengers flew through the Parisian airports.
During the 1980s and 1990s, L'aéroport de Paris, which became Aéroports de Paris in 1989 and Paris Aéroport in 2016, built new satellites and terminals for the Charles de Gaulle airport (terminal 2, terminal 3). By 1987, traffic in the Parisian airports grew to 40 million. A TGV train station opened within the Charles de Gaulle airport in 1994.
Privatization and modernization of airports
Aéroports de Paris became a public company on 20 April 2005, although the French government retained a majority of the company's shares. In 2008, Aéroports de Paris and Schiphol Group signed a strategic partnership that involved buying 8% of each other's shares to seal the deal. In 2008, French conglomerate Vinci also bought 3.3% of Aéroports de Paris, calling the airport operator "the heart of its strategic aims".
From Wikipedia’s article on Groupe ADP, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2