Published: November 01, 2010
We have 8,500 employees, a turnover of EUR 1.5bn, a third of which was achieved in France, another in Europe, the last in Russia, the old Soviet republics and North America – also in Brazil, where we have just got a foothold – Bonduelle is the world’s number one in processed vegetables, in all their forms, that’s to say fresh, catering, frozen or canned. Around 60% of products are sold under our own label, Bonduelle or Cassegrain for example, and 40% under the distributors’ brands. A family business, founded in 1853, Bonduelle, which is a publicly traded company is characterised both by its international aspect – subsidiaries in 18 countries, the brand distributed in 24 countries, and 43 production sites – and by the strength of its development, partly achieved by acquisition. The most recent purchase, of France Champignon, will add an additional EUR 200 m to our turnover.
No, quite the opposite. The strength of our organisation rests upon a big centralisation, facilitated by the fact that all the entities share a unique ERP. Cash-flow, risks, liquidity and bank relations are handled by the parent company; the subsidiaries, who don’t have treasuries, take out loans almost exclusively from us.
I am assisted by five people, one of whom is in apprenticeship, who are divided among two areas: the first is in charge of cash flow and of the back office, be it cash-pools, netting, payment management and the treasury information systems; the job of the other group, put simply, is to manage risk activities and the front office. We also have the constant support of a service provider, Forex Finance, who carry out the monitoring of positions and establish corresponding connections. They have also been a great help in the total reorganisation of our currency cash flow.
It is helped by banking cash pools – one for northern Europe, one for France and two for Southern Europe, and manual cash pools in central Europe, and it all finally comes together in the central treasury. For these procedures, we call on a limited selection of French banks who have been with us for a long time, according to a simple principle: we trust them with our cash flow proportional to our financial quota. These cash pools are underpinned by netting, whose efficiency is proven considering the importance of inter-group transactions. [[[PAGE]]]
Around 60% of products are sold under our own label, Bonduelle or Cassegrain for example, and 40% under the distributors' brands.
We are moving forward, via a local integrator, DWS, with the deployment of a new version of the treasury programme Sage Treasury 3.1, which is compatible with Sepa, and we will soon implement an electronic signature book in our subsidiaries which will allow our subsidiaries to take charge of the payment files generated by both our ERP and the subsidiaries, in order to have direct access to our central banking communication programme, where only five or six people in the company will be able to issue bank settlements. For risk assessment and development of our instruments, we use Titan, a front-to-back application, and we also subscribe to a real-time financial news feed. The fact that we are a listed company means that we are obliged to apply the IFRS standards strictly and in their entirety, hence a certain sophistication in our instruments. On the subject of the transition to Sepa, for example in the development of the structure of our cash pools, we chose SwiftNet, as this protocol meets our needs so well in managing our international cash flow in back-office operations and the follow-up of market operations.
As we use a dozen currencies, and carry out important intra-group transactions, this requires a rational organisation and a very strict intervention manager who is checked by the managing director. But instead of a regular, in-depth report to the general manager, we give more leeway, a crucial component which allows us to react according to the volatility of the market. In an industrial and commercial group like ours, the prerequisite to each process of cover of the markets is that natural cover is optimised. With residual risks, their management, which concerns some millions of euros, is achieved alongside standard products, terms and options, in those currencies or more complex parities like the rouble, the Czech crown, the Polish zloty or the Hungarian forint. Beyond commercial cash flow, we keep an equally close eye on good management and cover, whenever possible, our cash flow financing and legacies, even though the task sometimes proves complicated.
Our industrial activity generates working capital requirements and is seasonally affected: structurally, therefore, we are borrowers. For the long term, we have regularly applied to private investments in the United States, beside pools from insurance companies and pension funds, with which we maintain ongoing relationships. We made three investments, in 2000, 2004 and 2005, whose expiry dates fall between 2012 and 2017. This type of financing, well adapted to our sort of business, is relatively competitive and easy to put in place, but there is another side, the respect of the covenant – chiefly the ratio of outcome structure or of cover of new sources of funding. In addition, we have put two Obsaar issues [bonds with warrants and/or redeemable share purchase warrants], one for EUR 150m in 2007, the other for EUR 140m in April 2009. Finally, we have bilateral lines of credit with our banking pool.
After higher education at ESC Lille, where I specialised in business and market finance, I began my professional career at Leroy Merlin – Adeo Group – in compliance, and then soon moved to the treasury, where I was mostly concerned with currency management. The second stage was banking, with a stint of five years at the Caisse d’épargne at Flanders as treasurer, then I took over finance management, where I was chiefly in charge of own account activity.
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