Published on : 15/06/2022 – 11:18Modified : 15/06/2022 – 11:16
Paris (AFP) – Soon to be at the head of Veolia, Estelle Brachlianoff intends to follow in the footsteps of Antoine Frérot, who following 12 years at the head of the water and waste giant leaves her with a profitable and enlarged group, which will remain same president.
The new CEO will take office on July 1, the third woman to take on such responsibilities today within the CAC40.
Number two of Veolia for four years, the runner-up to Antoine Frérot was appointed, unsurprisingly, in January by the board of directors. The general meeting of shareholders must on the other hand act on Wednesday the dissociation of the management positions, which the directors wanted, leaving the outgoing CEO his function as president.
A few days before the handover, Estelle Brachlianoff appears prepared.
“Antoine has been entrusting me with subjects for some time now, one by one, more and more”, explains to AFP this 49-year-old Polytechnician, at Veolia since 2005.
“I was on the front line by his side” to manage the Covid. “And more recently the whole subject of the takeover of Suez, which is the work of Antoine, but behind it we had to continue to deliver good results, and prepare the reconciliation of the workforce, the casting in each country. It’s been three months that we have the keys (of 60% of Suez, editor’s note) and it’s going very well because it’s been preparing for some time”.
“Concrete”
As a child, the future boss dreamed above all of being an astronaut, or an astrophysicist. His mother, an engineer at Aerospace (future Airbus Group) teaches him to follow his desires: “Choose what you want and then you go there”.
It will finally be a preparatory Maths Sup-Maths Spé, then the X and the National School of Bridges and Roads. Her career began in the transport infrastructure of Val-d’Oise: “I need concrete, ground”, to survey the construction sites, she says.
“My CV may seem very linear: good schools, a first job, the civil service, then bigger and bigger jobs… But that’s not how I experienced it: my engine has always was curiosity. I always say to myself + why not?, let’s try +”.
When she arrived at Veolia, she chose industrial cleaning, “small margins, not a lot of technique, a lot of people…I loved it”. It will then be waste in the Ile-de-France region, then in Great Britain, where she is developing the circular economy and transforming a very local and very masculine management.
On his roadmap now: maintain the results “despite inflation, the war in Ukraine…” and pursue a strategic plan focused on hazardous waste, recycling… to make him the famous “champion of transformation ecological”.
We must also “succeed in the merger with Suez. In the short term, these are cost synergies, in the medium term it is to make new offers”, she says. And there is “the human aspect. The battle (of the OPA) was tough. I spend time seeing the teams”.
Socially, what boss will she be? “Antoine Frérot is a boss who has always highlighted the stakeholders, the fact that the company had to be useful to be prosperous and I really want to continue. With of course the subjects that will arise, such as in the short term that of purchasing power, on which I am working to be able to support our employees”.
The unions do not say anything else. “It was trained by Antoine Frérot, it is not closed. We are neither worried nor optimistic, we will not always agree, but at least there will be an exchange”, says Vincent Huvelin, representative CGT.
“Women CEOs, in CAC40 companies, are counted on the fingers of one hand, which means that they are combative”, also underlines Patricia Béhal, CFE-CGC representative.
Estelle Brachlianoff recently signed a forum for polytechnicians encouraging girls to dare to do math when the share of female students is around 20% at l’X. Another recipe for success according to her, “choose the right traveling companion”, says this wife of a mid-sized business manager, mother of a girl and a boy, now teenagers.
© 2022 AFP