News on 16 November 2000
Two of France’s major industrial companies have announced
the formation of a facilities management company. They aim to make the
new joint venture company one of the top three in Europe "as quickly
as possible."
The partners are electronics group Thomson-CSF and Alstom, a global specialist
in power and transport infrastructures. The new company, to be called
Faceo, will combine the complementary FM activities of Thomson Gestion
Immobilière and Alstom Contracting (formerly Cegelec). Combined
turnover is Eur163m (£98m) and the two operations have 800 staff
working across 75 industrial and office sites, totalling 2.1m sq m.
The alliance was prompted by the rapidly developing FM market in Europe
and especially France. Faceo predicts growth in its home territory of
20% to 30% a year and puts the total market at 110m sq m, worth Eur8.5bn
(£5bn) in service provision. The company says 31% of this demand
is handled in-house, 63% is subcontracted to single service providers
and just 6% of the market is outsourced to FM providers. The company expects
to expand rapidly into Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. A UK
company also features on their organogram.
Thomson and Alstom say that by combining resources, the two companies
will be able to exceed the critical mass demanded in this emerging market,
and establish a sustainable leading position.
The new company will have two co-chairmen: Serge Delon, president of Thomson
Gestion Immobilière; and Serge Clémente, Deputy Manager
of Alstom Entreprise Paris.
Faceo sees three principal benefits for its shareholders:
- They can outsource facility management for their own sites to a professional
service provider, who guarantees top-quality service at the best price
to drive enhanced competitiveness.
- They have permanent access to a subsidiary capable of expanding their
core business offering.
- The creation of a new enterprise which will create value.
The Thomson-CSF group assigned management of its French
property assets to a subsidiary, Thomson Gestion Immobilière in
1985. Since 1994, TGI has also taken charge of support functions for all
of the group’s industrial and service facilities in France.
Cegelec, now Alstom Contracting, offered infrastructure maintenance services
among its many business lines. This activity has served as a springboard
for the development of facility management services in recent years.
