Paris (AFP)
Renault convened Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. a board of directors intended to validate the appointment as general manager of Luca de Meo, defector of the Volkswagen group, we learned from a source close to the French automaker.
The directors of the Losange group, who will meet at the company's headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), had already expressed themselves in December in favor of the candidacy of Mr. de Meo, an Italian of 52 years to take the operational reins of the automaker.
A press release must be issued at the end of the meeting.
According to sources close to the diamond group, the taking up of office by M. de Meo, who until now had directed the Spanish manufacturer Seat (a Volkswagen subsidiary), will not be immediate, but will have to wait still "a few months" because of the contract which bound him to the German group.
Large construction sites await this multilingual and perfectly French-speaking leader.
The president of the board of directors Jean-Dominique Senard is counting on him to breathe new life into a business shaken by the upheavals of the Carlos Ghosn affair, the former boss of the group who arrived clandestinely in late December in Lebanon to flee Japanese justice. who was to judge him for various embezzlement.
Luca de Meo is credited with having straightened Seat, which he took over in 2015 after having managed the marketing and sales of the German manufacturer Audi. The Spanish brand, dying four years ago, broke a historic sales record last year.
The administrators of Renault had decided in October to dismiss from office the general manager Thierry Bolloré, whose performance and style of management, deemed authoritarian, were questioned. Since then, CFO Clotilde Delbos has been acting.
Luca de Meo will notably have to turn around the activity of the diamond brand in Europe, which must move upmarket to stand out more from its Romanian "low-cost" subsidiary Dacia.
Renault is at worst on the stock market. The share has lost more than half its value since the arrest of Carlos Ghosn in November 2018, a sign of investor mistrust after a year of crisis between the French manufacturer and its ally Nissan.
© 2020 AFP