Frenchman Antoine de Saint-Affrique appointed CEO of Danone

As expected, the French Antoine de Saint-Affrique will take over the general management of Danone in September, recently exhausted by a governance crisis and the ousting of former CEO Emmanuel Faber, the group announced on Monday. His appointment was recorded by the board of directors in the afternoon, two months after the meeting which had resulted in the definitive disavowal of his predecessor, at the end of a sling of shareholders combined with divisions within the board. .

At the French giant of yogurt, infant nutrition and bottled water (Actimel, Evian, Blédina brands…) with 100,000 employees worldwide, the new CEO will have the difficult task of finding the path to growth.

But also to turn the page of a "painful governance crisis", in the words of the chairman of the board of directors Gilles Schnepp, during the general meeting of shareholders at the end of April.

Reassuring profile?

Until now Antoine de Saint-Affrique, 56, was Managing Director of the Zurich group Barry-Callebaut, which supplies cocoa and chocolate preparations to food giants Unilever, Nestlé and Mondelez as well as to pastry professionals.

His departure from this cocoa giant was announced last month, fueling speculation about an upcoming arrival at Danone.

Before that, Antoine de Saint-Affrique spent a large part of his career in the multinational consumer products company Unilever, until chairing, from 2011 to 2015, its food branch.

He also worked for some time at Danone in the late 1990s, as marketing director for the Liebig Amora Maille brands, then owned by the group.

His record as leader of Barry-Callebaut has been praised.

With him, the group experienced an expansion phase, both "in terms of growth and cash flow", underlined Jean-Philippe Bertschy, analyst at Vontobel.

Enough to present a reassuring profile to shareholders who held Emmanuel Faber responsible for commercial and financial performance deemed insufficient.

Job cuts

Among them, the American investment fund Artisan Partners, Danone's third shareholder with around 3% of the capital, declined to comment on the appointment of his successor on Monday.

Emmanuel Faber - who combined the functions of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - had been replaced as Chairman of the Board of Directors by Gilles Schnepp.

And Danone had started looking for a new general manager.

Among the selection criteria, listed by Gilles Schnepp at the last general meeting, were a "very strong experience in the mass consumption professions", an "international dimension", a "personal assessment marked by performance", a "compatibility indisputable with the culture, values ​​and societal commitments of Danone ", as well as" adhesion "to the Local First reorganization project initiated by Emmanuel Faber.

The group's unions were worried about the destabilization and then the departure of Emmanuel Faber, reputed to advocate a greener and more social capitalism. Since then, the board of directors has repeated its adherence to the Local First plan, which is supposed to generate savings and increase the group's profitability. It provides for 1,850 job cuts worldwide, including 458 in France. The Board also said it was attached to Danone's "mission-oriented" status, adopted last year, which urges Danone to pursue extra-financial objectives, particularly in terms of environmental protection.