Carrefour CFO Bouchut pays price for Brazilian failure

After the failure of its Brazilian takeover plans, Carrefour has replaced their instigator – and its Chief Financial Officer – Pierre Bouchut with ex-Philips CFO Pierre-Jean Sivignon, aged 54 and last year’s “CFO of the year” in the Netherlands. 

From Philips to Carrefour

Sivignon will take his new office on 1 September, five months after leaving Dutch electronics giant Philips where he had been CFO,  Executive Vice President and Member of the Board of Management since 2005. Carrefour’s headquarters issued a press statement welcoming his “financial expertise, international experience of over 30 years and his leadership skills” as “strong assets to continue the transformation of Carrefour”. 

‘Punished’ for Brazilian fiasco

Pierre Bouchut will continue his work as CFO alongside Sivignon for two months, after which he will take over the office of Executive Director for Growth Markets from Thierry Garnier, whose “new roles which will be announced in the coming weeks”. Analysts think Bouchut is paying the price for the failed takeover of Grupo Pão de Açúcar, that chose to continue its cooperation with Carrefour’s arch rivals (and Bouchut’s former employers) Casino. His appointment to the Growth Markets department, alongside his connections with holding company Blue Capital – in which major shareholders Bernard Arnault (LVMH) and Colony Capital (private investment fund) cooperate – gives fuel to the rumours of a split of the supermarket group. 

French game of musical chairs

This is only the latest episode of Carrefour’s musical chairs soap, after the departures of James McCann, director of Carrefour France, in May and Vicente Trius, director of Carrefour Europe minus France, in February. The managerial mess also shows in the company results: Carrefour expects its operational profits to drop 23% in the first half of this year. Its shares fare even worse and dropped from 52 euro to 18.7 euro in four years time.