French hypermarket chain Carrefour has appointed Gérard Lavinay as the new head of its Italian branch. His successor as logistics director will be François-Melchior de Polignac. Remarkable: both gentlemen were previously in charge of Carrefour Belgium.
Carrefour Belgium as launch platform
As executive director of the group in Italy, Lavinay will report directly to Alexandre Bompard and will remain a member of the group executive committee. The 57-year-old began his career at Euromarché in 1980 and held multiple operational positions in France, including head of supply chain, director of fresh products and supermarket director. He then became director of the supermarkets in Greece and executive director of Carrefour in Chile and Belgium. From 2013 to 2017, he led Carrefour’s operations in Northern Europe (Belgium, Poland and Romania) and since 2017 he was executive director of merchandise, supply and formats.
De Polignac (45) takes over Lavinay’s tasks and thereby automatically joins the executive committee. The Frenchman started his career as financial controller at L’Oréal, before joining the Boston Consulting Group for a period of three years. In 2000, he joined the mergers and acquisitions department of Carrefour and thereafter became director of a hypermarket. Next step in his career was being director of all supermarkets in Poland and not much later, he got assigned to a group-wide transformation project and the hypermarket chain appointed him as executive director in Romania. In 2013 he became managing director of Carrefour Belgium, and since 2017 he has been holding the position of executive director for transformation, merchandise and partnerships.
