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Shaken by the pandemic and the markets, Danone presents its 2020 results on Friday

2021-02-16T06:25:19.210Z


A pandemic that weighs on sales, job cuts, shareholders who try to destabilize the CEO: Danone, which presents its 2020 results on Friday, begins 2021 without leaving the zone of turbulence. Read also: Danone: the pressure is mounting on the board of directors The clouds are accumulating above CEO Emmanuel Faber, targeted by the offensives of investment funds entered into the capital thanks to t


A pandemic that weighs on sales, job cuts, shareholders who try to destabilize the CEO: Danone, which presents its 2020 results on Friday, begins 2021 without leaving the zone of turbulence.

Read also: Danone: the pressure is mounting on the board of directors

The clouds are accumulating above CEO Emmanuel Faber, targeted by the offensives of investment funds entered into the capital thanks to the fall in the share price - at its highest in 2019, the title has since lost a quarter of his value.

The most severe warning came last Thursday: the Artisan Partners fund, now the third shareholder, with around 3% of the capital, requested an "

urgent change

" at the head of the French flagship of the food industry.

According to this American company, which took a stake last year, the upheavals caused by the pandemic are not sufficient to explain the decline in the group's performance (-5.4% in turnover over the first nine months of 2020, i.e. a shortfall of nearly a billion compared to the same period in 2019).

Anxious not to be presented as an activist fund, Artisan Partners argues that it has a "

plan

" for the group that "

does not involve financial engineering, or the dismantling or sale of the company

".

A few weeks earlier, the magazine Challenges revealed that a small London activist fund, Bluebell Capital, had asked in more direct terms the departure of Faber, and pleaded like Artisan Partners to separate the functions of chairman and managing director.

In the Sunday Journal, Emmanuel Faber replied that he did not have "

a dogmatic position on this subject

".

Behind the scenes, a source close to the file judges that the funds are engaged in an "

opportunistic maneuver

", above all guided by the desire to reap the fruits of the rebound of the title and of sales, when the vice of the pandemic will loosen .

Support from unions

Obviously anxious at the idea that Emmanuel Faber loses the confidence of the board of directors, the ex-director general of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, warned Monday that he was ready to "

return his apron"

if this council

“Considers that Danone has gone too far in pursuing environmental and societal commitments

”.

Pascal Lamy chairs a committee responsible for evaluating Danone's implementation of these commitments since the group became a “

mission-

driven

company

” in June with over 99% shareholder approval.

The unions also support him: FGA-CFDT split a press release arguing that "

current governance is the best

".

"

Activist funds are trying to impose on the Danone group their model based only on short-term financial profits with the risk of imminent and serious repercussions on employment, or even a dismantling of the group,

" warned the FGTA-FO .

Read also: Danone goes on a dry basis to revive

The unions go to the net when Danone is working on an "

adaptation plan

".

It provides for 2000 job cuts and an overhaul of the organization so that it is less centralized, more "

agile

", in the words of the CEO.

This plan aims to improve the group's profitability so that it has the means to invest, in particular in ever greener packaging, and does not lose ground in the face of powerful competitors Unilever and Nestlé.

Danone suffers from the comparison with the Swiss giant which will present its annual results Thursday, a day before him.

Source: lefigaro

All business articles on 2021-02-16

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