Between management failures and judicial setbacks, four big names in employers in the Netherlands are found in turmoil.
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The time is storm for large Dutch bosses. Three of them, the leaders of Philips, Shell and Schiphol airport are forced to hand over, and a fourth, Frits Van Eerd, CEO of the Jumbo supermarket chain, saw, Friday, September 16, Its prolonged detention of two weeks, as part of a large investigation for fraud and money laundering.
The departure of Frans Van Houten, 62, boss of Philips since 2010, was announced at the end of August and will be acted by shareholders on September 30. The sudden fall in the Philips action since the beginning of the year will prevent this manager, who entered the Eindhoven business in 1986, from assuming a fourth term.
He pays the fiasco of sleep apnea processing devices which have damaging effects for health, due to the presence of soundproofing and apparently toxic, even carcinogenic foam. Philips launched a reminder announcement of certain devices in 2021 and must now face many complaints that could cost him very dear. A collective procedure has been launched in France, where some 370,000 devices are used. His successor, Roy Jakobs, will occupy his chair on October 15.
bad performance
Ben Van Beurden, 64, director general of the oil tanker Shell, also pays poor performance, translated by the decrease in the dividend of the company: in 2020, he had to be reduced, for the first time since the end of the second World War. The announcement, by the boss, at the end of 2021, of the moving of the headquarters and the tax location of the company of Amsterdam to London was also criticized for him, like his poker: the takeover, completed in 2016, from the British oil and gas group BG Group, for the trifle of 46 billion euros.
The refocusing of the group on liquefied natural gas and deep water boreholes was supported by the shareholders, but they ended up estimating that this contributed to hindering the growth of the group, faced with an offensive of NGOs environmental. They have obtained justice that she forces Shell to reduce her emissions by 45 % 2 by the end of 2030. This will be one of the challenges of Mr. Van’s successor Beurden, Wael Sawan, hitherto responsible … weakly carbon energies.
“I did my best”
At Schiphol-Amsterdam Airport, second European “Hub”, Dick Benschop, 64, will have been forced to anticipate the end of his mandate and, like his colleagues, to consider retirement more early than expected. “I have done my best, but we are not there yet,” this former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said on Thursday, September 15, in an allusion to the influx of passengers that the airport n ‘has not managed to manage for months.
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