The former executive of Bolloré Logistics, at the head of Europe for nine years, will not go further at CMA CGM. He takes the helm of the most profitable job at Geodis, the French logistics group owned by SNCF. He joined the management team at a time when the Frenchman had just presented his “Ambition 2027” plan.
He announced it a few days ago from his LinkedIn account, a social network where he is very active. Henri Le Gouis, former general manager for Europe at Bolloré logistics, has joined the French logistician Geodis to head the transport commission, one of the four businesses of the SNCF subsidiary with contractual logistics, distribution & express transport and European road transport. In doing so, he finds himself at the head of the department which generates the first source of income for the group led by Marie-Christine Lombard (renewed in 2021). Freight forwarding represented 32% of Geodis' turnover in 2023 (€11.6 billion) and 47% in 2022 (€13.7 billion), with 858,000 TEUs transported by sea, 265,000 t by air. The department's share of Ebitda (€1.11 billion) is not public.
Caciques on the departure
Henri Le Gouis will therefore not have stayed very long within the CMA CGM group, which swallowed Bolloré Logistics in February, and closely follows the departure of Thierry Ehrenbogen, the former CEO of Bolloré logistics and tenor of the Bolloré group where he officiated for 20 years.
The new Geodis recruit is also a very long-term employee (20 years) of Vincent Bolloré's group where he joined in 2005 to manage finances in France (CFO) before taking over as general manager of several French regions, then that of Western Europe for four years until 2015 and finally of the Europe zone until recent developments (change to Ceva Logistics, still led by the resilient Mathieu Friedberg).
A juggernaut of the sector
Henri Le Gouis joins another behemoth in the sector, which presents itself as the fifth operator worldwide (but there are many who claim this rank). With 52,819 people (the number of jobs in the transport commission is not known at this stage), the French still generates €3.2 billion of its revenues in France and the Maghreb (€4 billion across the Atlantic, 3 € billion in Europe and €1.2 billion in Asia). As business general manager, Henri Le Gouis should join an executive committee made up of 17 members on this date.
He takes the reins of a segment which is seeing the end of a cycle of two exceptional years. Geodis experienced a 15% reduction in its turnover between 2022 and 2023, driven by the normalization of air and sea freight rates and volume declines linked to the global economic slowdown. But beyond that, the transport commission, as with the entire logistics sector, operates in an increasingly complex and changing global environment, plagued by multiple crises (energy, geopolitical, political, climatic, etc.). .) which influence the sourcing, supply, production and distribution logistics of companies. Reshoring, nearshoring, friendshoring…, logisticians are at the heart of this large-scale reorganization of goods flows.
Ambition 2027
In the new “Ambition 2027” strategic plan that the company has just presented, management intends to increase its Ebit margin (operating profit in French accounting) from 3.8 to 6% of turnover in three years and “ pursue a proactive and targeted strategy
external growth » in a sector that is still largely fragmented. This is evidenced by the long sequence of maneuvers around DB Schenker which has just exhausted analysts with conjectures.
« You would have to be blind not to see that our sector is in full consolidation. The operation around DB Schenker is the most striking proof of this. And it is also rich in lessons to know if there is not a two-speed Europe in terms of concentration », indicated Henri Le Gouis in an interview with Merchant Navy Journal.
Adeline Descamps
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