Veolia secures its hands on its competitor Suez to create a global giant

Seven months of battle, we had rarely seen this in the French business world.

And on arrival, Veolia gets its hands on its competitor Suez to create a global giant.

It is an operation of nearly 26 billion euros which will have given rise to a Homeric battle between the two French groups.

Enter a prey, Suez, who used all possible weapons to defend his independence.

And a predator, Veolia, bigger and who won the bottom very classically, that is to say by putting more money on the table.

This stock market battle mobilized fifteen investment banks, the largest law firms, lobbyists - not to mention the State which tried on several occasions to get the two groups to negotiate while all this was taking place against a background of Covid crisis.

All's well That ends well ?

For Veolia, that's for sure.

The group led by Antoine Frérot will see its turnover jump from 26 to 37 billion euros.

Veolia is changing its dimension on the world stage, in a business, environmental services, which is developing everywhere.

Everywhere, there is an increasingly strong demand for water purification, for the treatment, recycling, recovery of waste, for the ecological transition.

These are technological and strategic professions.

Water is an essential and rare good par excellence - and the two French groups have a competence recognized at the world level.

But what will remain of the Suez group?

The new Suez will make around seven billion euros in turnover and will employ 45,000 people, or half of the current workforce of Suez -Veolia, for the record, it is 180,000 employees.

The new Suez group will focus mainly on its French activities, the rest being acquired by Veolia.

That said, even cut off from a large part of its activities, Suez will remain a competitor of Veolia in France: it will be able to continue to compete to win the water or waste market of a particular local authority.

It was important for elected officials, for mayors, to continue to have the choice between several private operators.

Brussels in any case imposed this division to preserve competition.

Two major challenges remain: on the Suez France side, we will have to motivate the teams who would have preferred to continue to be part of a large global group.

And on the Veolia side, it will be necessary to successfully integrate the other half of Suez employees, this is never the simplest part in a takeover bid.

Especially when the teams fought against each other for months.