Through Maxime Gil
Published on
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It is a project that they had not really planned in their career. But when the opportunity presented itself, they didn’t let it go. AT Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), employees bought the company in which they work: EcoCO2.
“Do we have an interest in integrating a large group”?
This specialist in programs to improve its environmental performance and obtain certifications in this area is not in the throes of financial difficulties or any social plan. Far from there. The company has even experienced accelerated development in recent years with an average annual growth of 60%.
But the structure created in 2009 had to deal with the retirements of its former boss, Jacques Allard, and the former CEO. From the end of 2018, the question of the company’s future arose, with a sales project. A management committee to support the sale was then set up.
Johanna Le Conte, Director of Research & Development at the time, and Isabelle Senn Zilberberg, charged at this time with an energy saving awareness program, are part of it. The latter says:
When we saw the first proposals arrive at the end of 2019, at the beginning of 2020, this is where we clicked and we said to ourselves: why shouldn’t it be us who would propose a project ourselves in relation to our values? Do we really have an interest in joining a large international group when we were used to having our president in the next office and being involved in strategic decisions regarding our future development?
72 employees take shares
During 2020, the two employees then decide to look into the subject and take an interest in the SCOP (Cooperative and Participatory Company) model, a legal model regularly used for the buyout of companies by employees. But the project does not materialize in this form.
It is finally a more classic assembly in SAS (Simplified joint stock company) which was adopted last fall. And if both claim to have “zero training on the financial question”, they manage, by being accompanied by specialists, to raise funds from investors, to obtain bank loans … but above all the adhesion of employees: 72 out of 90 choose to take shares in the company. Various mechanisms have been put in place to facilitate their entry into the capital (via profit-sharing or the PEE in particular).
“Transmit to the people I trust the most”
“We presented the operation at the end of January 2021. We told everyone: ‘Jacques wants to sell, we made a proposal so that everyone can buy the company.’ It was unanimous, ”recalls Johanna Le Conte, now President of the Eco CO2 group, all the more satisfied to have been able to carry out the project in the midst of a health crisis.
After 18 months of maturation, the operation was finalized on June 8. “It was a choice of stability. We proposed a continuity in the functioning, the state of mind, ”says Isabelle Senn Zilberberg. Something to satisfy the founder: “One last subject was close to my heart, transmitting Eco CO2 to the people in whom I have the most confidence: those who have worked to develop it, namely the employees led by its management team. “
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