Paris (AFP)

The appointment of a new CEO of Danone was "imminent" Monday and the name of Antoine de Saint-Affrique held the cord to lead the group recently worn out by a governance crisis and the ousting of the former CEO Emmanuel Faber.

A meeting of the board of directors is scheduled for Monday afternoon to decide on the appointment of the new managing director of the French group, a source familiar with the matter told AFP.

The decision to appoint the French Antoine de Saint-Affrique "seems taken", continued this source, according to which an announcement will intervene "probably" at the end of the day.

The agenda of this board of directors is "the appointment to the post of general manager of Antoine de Saint-Affrique", according to the daily Le Figaro.

At the French giant (100,000 employees worldwide, 23.6 billion euros in turnover in 2020), the new CEO will have the difficult task of finding the path to growth and turning 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.

Former CEO Emmanuel Faber was ousted in mid-March after a soap opera lasting several months, marked by a sling of shareholders and divisions within the board.

M. de Saint-Affrique, 56, is due to leave the general management of the Zurich-based Barry-Callebaut group on September 1, which supplies cocoa and chocolate-based preparations to food giants such as Unilever, Nestlé and Mondelez as well. than pastry professionals.

Before that, he spent a large part of his career in the multinational consumer goods company Unilever, until chairing, from 2011 to 2015, its food division.

He also worked for some time at Danone at the end of the 1990s, as vice-president of marketing for the condiments specialist Liebig-Amora-Maille, then a subsidiary of the group.

- Reassuring profile -

His performance as a leader was praised when the announcement in April of his upcoming departure from Barry-Callebaut.

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

What present a reassuring profile to shareholders who criticized Emmanuel Faber for an insufficient balance sheet.

Mr. Faber had been replaced as Chairman of the Board of Directors by Gilles Schnepp.

And Danone (Actimel, Evian, Blédina brands ...) 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 this 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.

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