Page 36 - Book_Artelia_10years

Katse dam - Lesotho, 1993-1997

Sogreah takes advantage of its new freedom

In 1998, the Alcatel-CIT group refocused on the telecommunications sector and decided to sell off its
other activities, including its engineering department. At the time I was the CEO of Sogelerg-Sogreah,
and had to find a future for the company away from its historical industrial shareholder. After much
discussion and many false starts, a solution finally became clear. Sogelerg merged with Sodeteg, the
engineering subsidiary of the Thomson-CSF group (later Thalès), as the two companies shared the
same business lines and highly complementary markets. As for Sogreah, I proposed to take it over
from Alcatel by means of an LBO. The group imposed total confidentiality and very short timelines on
us. We therefore set up the operation in the space of four months, with only the executive committee
members involved.
On 1st January 1999, for the first time in its history, Sogreah became independent of any industrial
group and therefore both free and fully responsible for its own choices. I was convinced of the
company’s potential for development and we made good use of this freedom to make investments. We
reinforced our network in France by buying several French design offices, including Praud in Nantes
and Daragon in Marseille. We also created subsidiaries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe, with
the intention of turning them into active establishments in their local market and points of contact for
export projects.
We also opened the company’s share capital up more widely to approximately 100 managers and all
the employees through an employee shareholding plan (the FCPE), which progressively became a
significant shareholder in its own right. The company's employees participated very enthusiastically
in these operations.

34 I ARTELIA, 10 YEARS OF EXISTENCE, 100 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE