(AFP / PASCAL GUYOT)
The president of Decathlon, Fabien Derville, justified the payment of a billion euros in dividends to the Mulliez family, emphasizing, in an interview published Wednesday in La Voix du Nord, that the objective was “a more creative use value, not wealth.”
“It is obviously not money that goes into the pockets of shareholders,” he assured, while the unions criticized this decision taken shortly after the announcement of a social plan at Auchan, another company belonging to the Mulliez Family Association (AFM).
The money distributed on Monday corresponds to “cumulative results of the company which have not been distributed in the past through dividends”, indicated Mr. Derville, also a member of the AFM management board.
“If the Decathlon company has ample means to follow its own development, its own transformation, we have the right to be able to make another use of it through the challenges of the AFM,” he said.
-Mr. Derville did not want to detail the planned use of the funds, indicating only that “the vocation is entrepreneurial”: “new professions, acceleration of our core companies and where necessary support for transformation”.
After the announcement at the beginning of November of a social plan threatening 2,389 jobs at Auchan, “the momentum was not ideal at the media level”, he admitted.
The CFDT called for a strike on Saturday at Decathlon, deploring that the dividends, paid while according to this union the company has not achieved its objectives, are not used for salary increases.
As the fund does not come from the company’s “operating account”, the payment of dividends does not affect the current salary negotiations, affirmed Mr. Derville, emphasizing that “Decathlon is growing” and does not plan to not to modify its forecasts of results even if “we may not achieve all the objectives”.
