Page 40 - Book_Artelia_10years

Coteba offices, La Plaine Saint-Denis - France

Coteba integrates Thec and continues to grow

I took over as Chairman of Coteba from Marcel Guegan in 1999. It was a very dynamic SME with around
600 employees. Its business was booming and I had been familiar with it for several years. At that
time, the CGE (subsequently Vivendi) was splitting off its real estate activities. A buyer was already
lined up for Coteba, but we made a counter-proposal that was accepted. Over the course of 2003, with
around 40 executive managers from the company and two financial partners, we finalised a first LBO
to buy the company. In 2007, a second operation expanded the shareholder base to approximately
100 employees, who acquired all the share capital.

This independence played to Coteba’s advantage, and it continued its rapid development. It was
now able to implement external growth operations, whereas these had been difficult to envisage
before. The largest comprised the integration in 2006 of most of the activities of Thalès Engineering
& Consulting (Thec), a company created through the merger between the engineering consultancies
Sogelerg (Alcatel-CIT) and Sodeteg (Thomson-CSF). The 300 employees who joined Coteba at that time
brought with them their expertise in transport infrastructure and civil engineering structures, public
buildings and hospital engineering, and industrial and logistics processes. In parallel, we focused on
developing the company internationally by opening up new offices in Europe. By 2009 Coteba had
more than 1300 employees, i.e. more than twice as many as in 2003, and had doubled its turnover.

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