Today, I'm going to hold an exceptional conference about LafargeHolcim.
LafargeHolcim, world leader in cement, will close its Paris headquarters along with it office in Zurich. 200 jobs will be cut.
Four years after the announcement of the merger between French and his Swiss rival Holcim, all power will be concentrated in Switzerland.
It must have been a "marriage of equals". "Nobody buys anyone! " said Bruno Lafont, then boss of Lafarge. Four years after the announcement of the merger between the French cement champion and his Swiss rival Holcim, this fiction has definitely ended.
Friday, May 25, the world leader in cement announced its intention to close the Paris headquarters of the group. An eminently symbolic gesture. From now on, all power will be concentrated in Switzerland, where the organization will also be reviewed. In total, this restructuring should, according to the management, lead to the cut of around 200 jobs: 107 jobs in Switzerland and 97 jobs in Paris.
Since the merger, LafargeHolcim has two headquarters, one rue des Belles-Feuilles, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, the other in Switzerland. Teams are shared between the two locations. The entire internal audit and the health and safety departments are located in the former Lafarge headquarters, as well as some of the communication, human resources and legal department heads.
Lafarge in the 16th arrondissement
Spectacular deficit in 2017
A fragile balance threatened for several weeks. In March, on the occasion of the presentation of the annual results, the new boss of the group, the Swiss Jan Jenisch, did not hide that he wondered about the maintenance of two seats. While unveiling major losses, the CEO then announced initial cost-saving measures, including the removal of a management level and the closure of its regional headquarters in Singapore and Miami. "Nothing has been decided yet about Paris," said LafargeHolcim.
Today, the group takes action. "This painful but necessary step of simplification is essential to create a lighter, faster and more competitive LafargeHolcim," Jan Jenisch said in his statement.
In France, the reorganization is based on the historic headquarters of Lafarge, these 12,000 square meters where 200 to 300 people work. The positions that will not be eliminated will be transferred to Clamart, in the Paris suburbs, where LafargeHolcim already has a large presence.
In Switzerland, LafargeHolcim also plans to close its Zurich office and transfer posts to the town of Holderbank, where Holcim opened its first cement plant in 1912, as well as to the Zug office.
In 2017, LafargeHolcim suffered a net loss of 1.7 billion Swiss francs (1.5 billion euros), after a profit of 1.8 billion in 2016. This spectacular deficit is explained by the truth operation launched on the accounts of the group after the departure of his former leaders, the French Bruno Lafont and the American Eric Olsen. The two men were swept away in the wake of the Syrian scandal, revealed by Le Monde, Lafarge being accused of having financed terrorist groups to maintain the activity of its cement plant in Jalabiya, in northern Syria, at the beginning of years 2010.
The cement plant of Jalabiya in Northern Syria
It was found that by September 2014 Lafarge was paying 20 000$ per month to the Islamic State to keep its cement plant. But it wasn’t enough: soon the Jihadists would take over the factory.
