Antoine Frérot: Veolia Environnement

Antoine Frérot was born on June 3, 1958 in Fontainebleau, France.  He graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1977 and engineer at the Ponts et Chaussées corps. Antoine earned a doctorate degree from the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées.

He started his career in 1981 as an engineering researcher at the Central Research Office for French Overseas Departments and Territories. Antoine joined the Center of Study and Research of the École nationale des ponts and chaussées as project manager in 1983. He became assistant director from 1984 to 1988.

Antoine took a change in career course in 1988 joining Crédit National placed in charge of its financial operations. He then became an official representative at Compagnie Générale de Eaux in 1990. Five years later Antoine became CEO of CGEA Transport. He was appointed CEO of CONNEX in 2000. This is the transport division of Vivendi Environnement. He also joined the executive committee of Vivendi.

Antoine transferred to Veolia Environnement in 2003 as a Senior Executive Vice President and CEO of its water division Veolia Eau. He was eventually promoted to CEO of Veolia in November 2009 and in December 2010 also became the Chairman.

Veolia Environnement is one of leading environmental services companies in the world. It offers customized solutions in three complementary business areas: water management, waste management and energy management. Revenue was at €29 billion in 2012.

Despite the size of the company it has huge problems that Antoine has been addressing like the forced writedown of €800 million in 2011. This was due to problems in its businesses in Italy, the US and Morocco.  Antoine made a decision in December 2011 to pull out of half the countries the company was doing business in and start selling off €5 billion in assets.  His former mentor and former CEO was against this decision.  The former CEO used his seat in the board to try to oust Antoine which Antoine successfully fended off while strengthening his own position.

Business challenges and internal squabbles all part of the territory in which Antoine operates in. He is still continuing to lower the company debt and improve operations.