Hello, hello everyone. It's almost noon, 12 o'clock, live on Boursorama. Thank you for being with us every day for the live broadcast starting at noon. The replay is at 2 PM on Boursorama and on YouTube. Eccorama, the show that simplifies the economy for you. Special show today, and it's great to present Eccorama especially today because it's not every day and it's not common to have at the same time both a figure, a major figure of unionism, a former union leader, and a CAC 40 CEO. Why? Well, because Benoit Bazin, the CEO of Saint-Gobain, and Laurent Berger are publishing together 'Voies de Passage,' a book of interviews published by Lattès. A very, very interesting book of exchanges at a time when political and economic debates sometimes become a bit hysterical. Hello gentlemen. Hello Benoit Bazin.
Hello. CEO of Saint-Gobain. Thank you for being here. And also Laurent Berger. Hello Laurent Berger.
I've received you separately before, and it's true that having you together is great because of this book. It's a book of exchanges, and this first question is obviously first for Laurent Berger. You were the one who initiated, if I understood correctly, this book of exchanges. Why did you choose him, Benoit Bazin? What does he have more than other CAC 40 CEOs? Because you didn't know each other before this book, I believe.
We knew each other very little. First, because as you may have noticed, among my activities beyond being responsible today within Crédit Mutuel as deputy CEO, I have a small activity, more for fun, as a publisher in a collection called 'La Société du Compromis.' And I think that when we talk about compromise, it's immediately perhaps linked to my former functions, I think of companies. And it's true that I wanted to interview a great CEO, the head of a large company. I had crossed paths with Benoit on two occasions in collective meetings where we exchanged, and I had sensed a business leader, a CEO positively engaged in his company, who had a view on society and who had something quite rare in the humility of thinking that part of the choices we made were collective choices. So I admit I threw a bottle into the sea, so to speak, with this request, and I was pleasantly surprised that after some reflection, Benoit, I must admit, you agreed to do this book of interviews. It was one of the, in the recent periods we've lived through, it was a real moment of breathing for me to have these exchanges with Benoit because you see the depth of a man, a man aligned between his role as CEO and what he carries individually.
Bazin, it's true that at the beginning it's normal, it's legitimate, at the beginning you hesitated. And in the end, what made you want to do it? And then we'll talk about the book, obviously.
I hesitated because I already have many, many things to do for Saint-Gobain, and so it occupies me all day with the group's teams. It's first, as Laurent Berger just reminded us, a personal encounter, both human and intellectual, with Laurent Berger. It's the shared conviction that we felt the need to shake things up, to try to dialogue, to overcome the divide. Today, we feel that we define ourselves more by oppositions than by convergences. So there was this common concern to move forward. And then secondly, the concern also to show that in a company, the company is a place of social unity, a place of collective action, it's a human adventure. Not everything is perfect, but you can find both personal fulfillment and the role of the collective. And the company has a role to play in the transformation of society. So it was also to make this world of the company known, which is sometimes perceived from the outside as a bit hermetic, and to show what happens or what we try to make progress within the company.
Bazin, sometimes, or at least French people can sometimes have the image of CAC 40 CEOs who are obsessed with their financial results and their stock price, far from the societal concerns of France and the world. You are proof that this isn't the case.
Well, I believe that today's leaders, and we all try to do our best with all the teams, are concerned with the overall performance of their company. Naturally, there needs to be financial performance, whether in the short term because financial markets push us toward it, I would say unfortunately more and more. But above all, there needs to be a long-term vision. You need to give meaning to your teams. You need to offer autonomy, empowerment, and then you need to be concerned with social, societal, environmental issues, and the sharing of value. And it's only on the condition of a balance that is never perfect and always quite fragile but which you have to work on — it's only on the condition of this overall performance that the company can move forward. And I believe that Saint-Gobain — and Saint-Gobain is not the only one — but we can show that yes, we can achieve financial performance, even stock market performance. Saint-Gobain's share price has been multiplied by three over the last five years while progressing in sharing value with employees, in employee motivation, in customer recognition, in the balance of the territories in which we operate, and also in environmental performance. So it's not incompatible, but on the contrary, it's a guarantee of long-term performance, managing to find this overall balance.
By the way, Bazin, I wanted to ask you because we covered it last week in the news. Donald Trump is proposing — or rather wants to eliminate quarterly results and make them semi-annual. What do you think about that as a CAC 40 CEO?
So, American companies are indeed more than European ones subject to full quarterly results. We, for example, only publish revenue. In fact, a company's vision plays out over 5 or 10 years. Now, you need to give regular milestones to shareholders, but we meet with them regularly. So a semi-annual publication of results would be perfectly satisfactory. When Saint-Gobain invests in a new furnace, it's for 20 or 30 years. When we commit to decarbonization, our CO2 emissions, it's also carbon neutrality by 2030, 2040, 2050. So having this long-term vision is first and foremost what drives the company's performance.
Laurent Berger, when a unionist dialogues with a major CEO to find ways forward — that's the title of the book, essentially — we're talking about compromise. What signal, what message does that send to society, to CEOs, to employees, to citizens, and to politicians as well?
It's first to send a message that we need to stop caricaturing what the company represents. It's sometimes a bit caricatured, whereas all opinion polls show that employees are attached to the company, and citizens too, because the company is a place of common ground, a place where compromises are built. It's places where you fulfill yourself, where you also confront contradictory interests but always seeking ways forward, compromises. So there was a desire to show this first, but to show it in an embodied way. I also wanted to show that the caricature we could sometimes make, including of CEOs, wasn't necessarily justified. And the main message — and it resonates with current events, I won't comment on current events, I remind you I'm no longer in a position of responsibility — is that compromises are possible, and that compromise requires recognizing the complexity in front of us. That is to say, choices have to be made. A company has to choose between its financial performance but also its impact and its overall performance. Choices where sometimes it's easier to share value and other times it's harder because less is being created. So all of this requires individual and collective intelligence. And I thought that doing it through the illustration, the testimony of a great CEO — that I went to seek, by the way, sometimes in the sense that I wasn't just a gentle interviewer, I tried in my own way, respectfully but trying to understand what it meant today to lead a great company, a great group like Saint-Gobain — was to show that behind all this there were people of conviction. And so the message is that there are ways forward to resolve conflicts that are sometimes inherent to any society and any enterprise, to show that we have ways of governing, sometimes companies but perhaps beyond, in a peaceful way, without caricature, without shortcuts, but with conviction.
Because the public debate — Laurent Berger, it's you who says it in L'Express — the public debate is often hindered by postures. That's what prevents understanding.
Of course, it's often hindered by postures, by drawing conclusions from idea debates that are already set before we even start debating. And what I loved in the dialogue I had with Benoit Bazin is the nuance, the taking into account of complexity, the taste for the collective, the fact of assuming leadership without considering oneself omniscient. That's so many things we sometimes struggle to find in the public debate. Without wanting to give lessons to anyone, but I think this book is a must-read for many actors who today hold positions of responsibility.
Because Bazin, for you, the company is part of the solution — well, facing all these great challenges that France must meet, but that the world must meet: energy transition, climate transition, digital transition, aging, social transition. The company is part of the solution more than part of the equation.
Ah yes, absolutely. The company is at the crossroads of all these issues because, in the same way that it is embodied by its men and women, it is at the intersection of issues of territory, employment, workforce, immigration, environmental transition, and so on. So the company is necessarily a stakeholder in all of this. Then, the company has means — financial means, human resources, means of innovation. If I take for example Saint-Gobain's strategy as a leader in sustainable construction, we know well that construction represents 40% of CO2 emissions, but we can provide low-carbon materials, advance in the circular economy, recycle materials. Saint-Gobain recycles about 18-19% of its materials worldwide. We can bring energy efficiency in building renovation, so quality, well-being. So the company has its mission — Saint-Gobain's mission is to be a leader in sustainable construction to bring well-being in buildings, in education, in health, obviously in housing. And it has means. And so today in a world that is increasingly divided, it strikes me to see an international group like Saint-Gobain with 160,000 collaborators in 80 countries. We have the means to share values, to share a mission, a vision of Saint-Gobain, to bring solidarity between teams from countries that are geopolitically opposed today. We had a seminar of 150 Saint-Gobain leaders just weeks ago, and there were Indians, Chinese, Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Poles in the same room. And so the company has this capacity to mobilize and respond with its financial and innovation means to today's and tomorrow's challenges.
Knowing that the path of compromise — I don't know who wants to answer between the two of you — isn't the simplest path to choose or to pave, whether in business or in politics? I don't know who wants to answer.
It depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for the solution, the compromise, and the way forward, there is no other way. Unless you consider that there would be interests that are entirely common. It's normal that a society, like a company, is traversed by contradictory interests. And if, in an extremely loyal, extremely sincere way, the different actors consider that what they have to build is the shared interest, the common interest, then compromise is the most effective means. And today the company is one of these means, including in the democratic crisis we're going through, I'm convinced of it. That is to say, the company has an economic role, it has a role in environmental transition, it has obviously a social role in terms of work, employment, sharing of value. But it also probably has quite a few things to transmit about dialogue, about the way dialogues are conducted, because there's an advantage in a company: at least we know why we're all together. It's to do something, to produce a good or a service. And often, I think the dialogues that can take place in the company — without being naive, there are places where it's much more difficult in companies — but it has something to transmit, and that's also one of the messages of the book: something to transmit to society about how we manage complicated things and yet manage to find ways forward.
I'll give you two or three examples, David, if I may. For example, we decided to train 80% of our collaborators on the Climate Fresk. So we've trained more than 80,000 in 3 years. That means understanding what's happening, adaptation, climate resilience. Second example, education. It's true that we see a big problem with youth employment. We have 2,000 apprentices at Saint-Gobain. So that's a compromise because obviously an apprentice isn't as performant as someone with 10 years of seniority. And the third topic, sharing of value. I'm happy that more than 60,000 Saint-Gobain employees are shareholders. They've invested about more than 4 billion, between 4 billion and 4.5 billion. 45% of our French employees are shareholders. We talk about pension capitalization, and well, employee savings at Saint-Gobain will be a little extra at the time of their retirement to have supplementary income. There you have three examples of compromises on which the company has a role to play beyond its strict financial performance.
Laurent Berger, you who have perspective on this, it's true that Saint-Gobain is a group with virtues in terms of value sharing. What do you think about it, by the way? The small dose, the two, the small dose of capitalization in pensions. Laurent Berger, without speaking politically but as a citizen, you say why not? Because the conclave hasn't been very conclusive on this topic.
I understand you well, but especially at this very moment, I'm not going to comment on current events and interfere with any of the actors who are engaged. The advantage of having taken a bit of distance is also finding things easier in a way. So I would be careful not to take the easy way out. What's certain is that capitalization for some already exists. It's called life insurance. There are also collective retirement savings plans. My concern hasn't changed: it's to ensure that the standard that is today that of a certain number of employees — those where there's the most collective bargaining, the most collective agreements, etc. — can become the standard tomorrow for all workers in our country. And it's far from being the case. And I believe that the pay-as-you-go system is an extremely solid system, but I understood that the organization I led, through its general secretary, had made a bit of an opening to reflect on what had been closed off — perhaps by the employer organization on the other side, if I may say so, because all of this was the subject of a compromise. You know, compromise isn't surrendering to the position of the person across from you. Compromise is that each person makes part of the journey. And in this case, I think that on the pension issue and the discussions that took place in the spring, the CFDT had made part of the journey.
What value should be shared? That's a question for both of you. To find ways forward, to find solutions, compromises. When you dialogue with someone who doesn't think like you — there are many topics we could go through — what value should be shared to hope to find a way forward, a compromise, when you're talking with someone who thinks orthogonally to you?
