2019 Annual financial report

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR 
OF THE SUPERVISORY BOARD

Maurice Lévy

Chair of the Supervisory Board

There is something surreal about presenting the Groupe's 2019 activity at a time when we are living through the most serious pandemic of modern times with its procession of bad news: the number of people infected with the coronavirus, those on life support or having lost their lives, and the difficulties of all countries in coping with this evil that has spread inexorably throughout our planet. Activity is largely stopped, populations are confined, new rules of social behavior are in force: distancing, restrictions on movement...

My first thought naturally goes to the new heroes, caregivers and all those who make life simply go on in such a difficult world. Their indispensable work for our society is admirable.

Faced with this difficult situation, which affects all economic sectors and the entire world, allow me to highlight the main decisions made by the Directoire and its Chairman, Arthur Sadoun, in full agreement with the Supervisory Board, from the very first hours of the news coming in from China and quickly applied to all our agencies:

• As a priority, the measures aimed at protecting our employees, their health and well-being, by offering them the means to work remotely: 95% of our global workforce was able to work from home and all measures were taken to enable them to experience this unprecedented situation with as little risk of harm as possible. I must express my admiration for the considerable efforts made by our employees and the treasures of creativity and inventiveness deployed to continue to serve our clients effectively.
• Make sure that we provide our clients with all the support they may need in all areas, by being close to them, to their primary concerns and by providing strategic, creative or technological solutions that can help them transition through this crisis as successfully as possible.
• Ensure that our Groupe is well protected and capable of overcoming the current difficulties, the extent of which are still unknown at the time of this writing, by ensuring rigorous management of our costs and cash flow and by keeping our ability to bounce back intact. It should be noted that the investments we have made over the years to build up an entity such as Re:Sources, technological resources and strategic technology or data activities are very valuable assets to get us through these difficult times. The deployment of the Marcel platform recently designed to develop exchanges between all our talent and make better use of our internal resources, will allow us to further improve the quality of our services, the development of our talent, and their optimal use.

In this unprecedented situation, the Supervisory Board met on Friday, April 10, to examine, in particular: the performance of the first quarter of 2020, the first economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the confinement in a certain number of countries or States, the decisions taken by the management to respond to the rapidly changing situation, and the dividend policy for fiscal year 2019, payable in 2020.