French energy group Engie announced Friday the appointment of Paulo Almirante as the chief operating officer of the group to coordinate the performance efforts of Engie's operational entities.
"With strong and acknowledged industrial expertise and international experience, he will support the action of the members of the Executive Committee in relation to the current performance and development programs," a press release read.
Almirante will remain executive vice president, in charge of the Generation Europe, Brazil, NECST (North, South and Eastern Europe), MESCAT (Middle East, South and Central Asia and Turkey) business units, and of environmental and social responsibility, it added.
CEO Isabelle Kocher noted that during the last two years, "decisive steps" had been taken with respect to Engie's transformation.
"The consistency of our strategy is now being reflected in our results. We owe this to the convergence of the views and cohesiveness of the teams, starting with the Group鈥檚 Executive Committee. Time has come to accelerate, and I have asked Paulo Almirante to coordinate efforts to realize the full potential of our three growth drivers: low-carbon generation, global networks and client solutions," she said.
According to the statement, a little more than two years ago, a new management team was put in place to carry through Engie's transformation plan, with the ambition of making the group "a pioneer and precursor of a new decarbonized, decentralized and digitized energy world".
"This transformation has now mainly been completed, ahead of the originally announced route plan. Since 2015, it has allowed 鈧�14 billion to be reinvested in growth drivers, the group having made 43 acquisitions in the client solutions domain alone," it said.
Engie is a global energy and services group, focused on three core activities: low-carbon power generation, mainly based on natural gas and renewable energy, global networks and customer solutions.
Present in 70 countries, the group has some 150,000 employees worldwide. It had a 2017 turnover of 鈧�65 billion.
By Hale Turkes
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr