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It will not be until May 2018 that Carrefour CEO Georges Plassat resigns, but as he had previously indicated his desire to guide his successor for a year, the distributor’s two largest shareholders are already playing their hand.
LVMH vs Galeries Lafayette
There has been a power struggle at Europe’s largest distributor ever since American investment fund Colony divested from the company at the end of January. Now, Groupe Arnault (which belongs to LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault) and the Moulin family (which owns the Galeries Lafayette) are trying to get their candidate in pole position to become Carrefour CEO.
Arnault controls 11.46 % of votes, almost as much as the Moulin family at 11.51 %, but according to French paper Le Monde, both shareholders are supporting another candidate without specifically mentioning who that might be. They also differ in opinion whether, like Georges Plassat, the position of chairman and CEO should reside with one person.
Plenty of candidates, but the main candidate is…
There is already a rather impressive list of possible successors: labour union FGTA-FO would like Carrefour France’s executive director, Noël Prioux, to take charge. The labour union leader feels he is the only one who can maintain the current social climate within the company and expressed his sentiment to Bernard Arnault in a letter. However, there are numerous other internal candidates: Thierry Garnier (Carrefour China CEO), Pascal Clouzard (Carrefour Spain CEO) and Pierre-Jean Sivignon (Carrefour CFO) among others.
According to Le Monde, there are plenty of outside options as well, from all parts of the world. There is American chain Best Buy’s French CEO, Hubert Joly, but also current Fnac-Darty CEO, Alexandre Bompard and restaurant group Elior CEO, Philippe Salle. German Rewe CEO, Alain Caparros, was already a candidate when Plassat had health concerns and could become Carrefour CEO now as well. Even Philippe Houzé, Galeries Lafayette’s chairman, is among the names mentioned, even though he barely beats Carrefour’s own age limit of seventy by one year.
However, the French newspaper thinks Bernardo Sanchez Incera is actually the frontrunner. He has been Société Générale’s top bankers since 2014, but has plenty of retail experience as well as Zara France’s managing director in the 1990s, head of LVMH’s fashion division from 2001 until 2003 (explaining his link to Bernard Arnault), before joining Vivarte in 2003 (succeeding Carrefour-bound Georges Plassat). Barely a year later, he took charge of Monoprix, jointly owned by Casino and Galeries Lafayette, linking him to Carrefour’s other major shareholder. Knowing the Moulin family and Philippe Houzé might actually turn him into the ideal compromise.
