Jean-Yves Le Brouster
Chairman and CEO of VINCI Energies

United in the face of crisis

2009 will be remembered as a year of economic and financial crisis. But our business units, building on their knowledge of their markets and ability to tailor their offerings to their customers’ requirements, weathered the downturn remarkably well. More than in previous years, our business volume depended on the professionalism and commitment of our teams. Their performance demonstrated the effectiveness of our organisation and management model, with our business units leveraging the solidarity and twinning system to ride out tough economic times and give us the flexibility, responsiveness and agility to focus on our customers, adapt to their needs and explore new markets. The reconstruction of power lines downed by the January 2009 windstorm called Klaus and the repair of the Channel Tunnel during the same period are two outstanding cases in point.

Favoring quality: a strategic choice

We gave priority to the quality of our contracts and refused to sacrifice the long to the short term, so our revenue declined from 2008. That said, many business units did manage to hold their revenue steady at a satisfactory level. This was particularly true of the BUs working in the fine chemicals and food processing sectors, in Industry, energy efficiency in the Service Sector, power transmission and urban mobility in Infrastructure and new information technologies and optical fibre in Telecommunications. Outside France, our volume held up well overall, especially in Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

Our policy: human and sustainable

Our Group today is sound. We have what it takes to get through the current difficult period and ensure our expansion. Growth drivers are on the horizon, especially in the renewable energies sector, a source of business opportunities now and going forward. We are preparing for the future by building on our fundamental values: day-to-day safety is an absolute priority and ongoing accident prevention measures are being taken on the ground to strive to meet our Zero Accidents goal; we remain strongly focused on welcoming, training and hiring young people as part of our commitment to enhancing the skills of all our employees and preparing for the challenges that lie ahead; and innovation enables us to support our partners and our customers. Vinci Energies is a resolutely active group that owes its strength to its mutually supportive, generous and courageous teams. Our motto, “Connecting Our Energies”, serves as a constant reminder of the spirit that underpins our work.