Paris (AFP)

Who will lead Danone tomorrow?

Will Emmanuel Faber keep the full powers of CEO or will he have to give up ballast, or even leave?

The board of directors of the French group meets on Monday, urged by some of its shareholders to look into its governance.

Chairman and CEO Emmanuel Faber has been facing a sling of shareholders for several weeks.

The silence of the fifteen other directors of the agribusiness giant has cast doubt on their intentions towards him.

Two investment funds made the departure of Mr. Faber a prerequisite for the recovery of the group's performance, whose sales volumes have been eroding for several years, a movement aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

These funds, which entered the capital thanks to the fall in the stock market price in 2020, hit the nail on the head at the end of last week.

Artisan Partners, 3rd shareholder with 3% of the capital, repeated that he found "urgent to deal with the structure of the board and the direction of the company".

While Emmanuel Faber defended with a certain arrogance his balance sheet during the presentation of the annual results on February 19, the fund considers the performance "mediocre" and the management poorly placed to initiate the "reinvention" of Danone.

Danone is working on a global reorganization plan providing for up to 2,000 job cuts among its managers.

The American fund specifies that it wants the appointment of a new president and a new managing director, endowed with "relevant external expertise".

The activist fund Bluebell Capital Partners, based in London and more modest in scope, is also asking that a new CEO be sought outside Danone.

According to him, the shareholders of the group are "overwhelmingly" in favor of the separation of the functions of chairman and managing director.

He threatens to put the subject on the agenda of the next general assembly, at the end of April, if the board of directors does not take it up.

Emmanuel Faber was content to say that he was "not dogmatic" on this question of the separation of functions.

- Pledges to shareholders -

Known for defending a capitalism freed from short-termism, greener and more social, Emmanuel Faber has been Managing Director since 2014 and Chairman of the Board of Directors since 2017.

The group seems anxious to show that it does not forget the importance of remunerating its shareholders.

On February 19, during the presentation of the results, Emmanuel Faber announced that the compensation of Danone's main executives, including his own, would henceforth be partly subordinated to the evolution of dividends and the share price.

And Sunday, on the eve of the board meeting not officially confirmed by Danone, the group announced that it would withdraw from dairy giant Mengniu and that the fruits of the operation would be donated "in their majority. "to shareholders.

According to Danone, its stake in Mengniu is currently valued at 850 million euros.

Monday morning, on the Paris Bourse, the title rose around 09:40 (08:40 GMT) by 1.84% to 57.50 euros in a market also on the rise.

Worried about seeing investment funds dictate the group's strategy, several group unions (CFDT, FO and CGC) have supported the current governance.

Sunday, the president of the FNSEA, the first French agricultural union, Christiane Lambert, was also moved by the situation in a tweet: "Chance of the calendar: 01/03 marks the end of # negotiations between #GMS [large and medium-sized surfaces] and #industrials under strong pressure to impose more deflations. The same day @EmmanuelFaber faces + activist funds + which demand more + profitability + for @DanoneFR # worried producers! "

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