11 December 2009
The Board of Directors
of Thales (NYSE Euronext Paris: HO) met under the chairmanship of Luc Vigneron
on 10 December 2009 and reviewed the Group's strategic prospects.
A comprehensive review of the company's activities has been
performed over the last few months. It has confirmed the wealth of Thales's
technological portfolio, the quality of its staff throughout the world and the
robustness of its customer base, and this has enabled Thales to overall
withstand the world economic downturn well. However, important difficulties on
several aerospace and security programmes have strongly impacted operational
profitability and highlighted the necessity for a profound transformation of
the operating processes used by the Group.
Against this backdrop, and as the global environment
continues to show depressed air traffic, government budgetary constraints and a
weak dollar against the euro, Luc Vigneron presented his initiatives to bring
Thales's operational performance closer to that of its European competitors and
thereby strengthen the profitable growth of the Group in the medium term:
1. A systematic
and comprehensive action to strengthen the control over bids and programme
management
2. A
performance plan, from which Thales expects a productivity improvement of
€1.3bn over the next 5 years. This productivity effort is a prerequisite to
keep the Group's competitiveness and will mobilise everyone within the company.
It will aim at:
- Bringing
down the non-quality costs and increasing customer satisfaction, in order to
align the whole Group to the levels achieved by its best-performing units,
- Raising the
efficiency of engineering, industrialisation, supply chain and information systems,
- Significantly
decreasing the overhead costs.
3. A
simplification of the organisation and management structures in order to foster
reactivity, particularly on export markets
These initiatives will be deployed throughout the Group in
the coming months.
The Board of Directors endorsed the strategy and the
transformation initiatives presented by Luc Vigneron.
Luc Vigneron then presented the proposed new organisation of
the Group, which will be formally communicated to employee representatives. In
order to simplify Thales's operations and foster transverse synergies and
commercial reactivity, the proposed new organisation would be structured around
three large regions and seven divisions. The three regions would be responsible
for their profit and loss account and the seven divisions would be in charge of
research & development, product policy and industrial policy worldwide.
Finally, Luc Vigneron announced the composition of the
management team on which he will rely to lead the implementation of these
actions.
Luc Vigneron, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Thales
declared:
"With the support of our shareholders and Board of
Directors, and around a renewed management team, we resolutely intend to
implement the actions for the transformation of Thales, which are aiming at a
better control of our bids and programmes, an improved productivity and a
simpler organisation. Better performing, more efficient, more reactive, Thales
will have the necessary room for manoeuvre to pursue its development and come
back to profitable growth."
Press contacts
Caroline Philips /
Alexandre Perra
Thales Corporate Communications
Tel: +33 (0)1 57 77 86 26
press.office@thalesgroup.com
Investor Relations contacts
Jean-Claude Climeau / Eric Chadeyras
Thales Investor Relations
Tel: +33 (0)1 57 77 89 02
ir@thalesgroup.com