Paris Until recently, Christel Heydemann was almost an unknown. Now the manager with the beaming smile is stepping into the limelight. According to media reports, the 47-year-old is to be appointed CEO at a meeting of the Orange telecom group on Friday. According to “Le Figaro”, she will officially take over the post on April 1 from long-time boss Stéphane Richard, who was convicted in the affair surrounding entrepreneur Bernard Tapie at the end of November and has to resign. Until Heydemann takes office, Richard will continue to run the business.
After Engie, Heydemann would be the second woman to lead a company in the CAC40 stock market index. Catherine MacGregor took over Engie early last year. A third woman, Estelle Brachlianoff, is set to join Veolia in July. A gradual rethink is taking place in France – although the old model is being followed: all three women have graduated from elite French engineering schools. Heydemann, who is considered to be charismatic and lively, was recognized as a “Young Global Leader” in 2012 by the World Economic Forum, which organizes the economic summit in Davos. Now she is a global leader.
The French state, as the most important shareholder, has a 23 percent stake in Orange, and the government apparently had a say in the selection. There were six candidates, including Heydemann, including Ramon Fernandez, Orange’s CFO. However, the French Ministry of Economy at Bercy let it be known at the beginning of January that Minister Bruno Le Maire “would like a woman to take over the management of Orange given the same skills”.
It is Heydemann’s first very high post, who comes from Clamart near Paris. So far, the daughter of an engineer and a university professor has been responsible for the European business of the French electrical appliance group Schneider Electric. A French graduate of Polytechnique and Ponts et Chaussées elite engineering schools, the French is no stranger to Orange. The mother of two sons has been an independent director of Orange since July 2017.
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Heydemann worked for Alcatel for 15 years
Her name is said to have been brought up by Stéphane Richard before he was sentenced, according to Orange circles. Richard had then considered entrusting her with the general management and remaining president himself.
After completing her studies, Heydemann worked for two years at the Boston Consulting Group and in 1999 went to the former French telecom supplier Alcatel for almost 15 years. In 2014 she joined Schneider Electric. “Christel Heydemann has known the telecommunications space well since she was with Alcatel-Lucent,” says an Orange board member. From 2011 to 2013 she was head of human resources at Alcatel. In addition to her position at Orange, she is also President of the French association for digital electronics Gimélec.
Sources within Orange also questioned her ability to spur the growth of such a large company. A number of challenges await Heydemann, including the development of new offers and job cuts in the giant corporation with sales of 42 billion euros and around 140,000 employees, 90,000 of them in France. She has also had to cut jobs worldwide at Alcatel.
Henri Vidalinc, President of the headhunter Grant Alexander, attests to her many skills: “She has gone through various disciplines: finance, human resources management, sales and strategy.” In the future there will be a division of offices at Orange. Richard was both President and CEO. He is to remain president until a successor is found in the spring, while Heydemann is to become general manager. The election of the President is likely to be just as difficult, because the tandem has to work.
Conviction of Richard cleared the way
Richard has been the head of Orange for eleven years and his mandate ran until the middle of this year. But a Paris appeals court had convicted him of complicity in an illegal government payment of millions to entrepreneur Bernard Tapie in 2008. He was sentenced to one year probation.
Richard, as chief of staff under the then finance minister and current ECB boss Christine Lagarde, approved a 400 million euro compensation payment from the state to Tapie. It was intended to compensate for Tapie’s losses in the sale of Adidas shares to the state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais in the 1990s, which is now called LCL and was privatized around 20 years ago.
More: Orange boss resigns after suspended sentence