Bertrand Dumazy
"What kills trust in management is making people invisible. I don't know anyone who gets up every morning saying they contribute nothing and are happy to do a bad job. You have to say thank you or hello sincerely and recognize employees' work."
— Bertrand Dumazy[2]
Overview
Bertrand Dumazy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | July 10, 1971 Tourcoing, France |
| Citizenship | French |
| Education | Lycée Sainte-Geneviève (classes préparatoires) |
| Alma mater | ESCP Europe; Harvard Business School |
| Occupation | Business executive |
| Employer | Edenred |
| Known for | Digital transformation of Edenred |
| Title | Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edenred |
| Term | 2015–present |
| Predecessor | Jacques Stern |
| Board member of | Air Liquide (independent director); Neoen (independent director) |
| Spouse | Françoise |
| Children | 4 |
🧑💼 Bertrand Dumazy (born 10 July 1971) is a French business executive who has served as chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edenred since 2015, overseeing the company's transformation from a paper-based issuer of Ticket Restaurant meal vouchers into a largely digital platform for employee benefits, mobility solutions and other corporate payment services.[4] Under his tenure Edenred has delivered sustained revenue and share-price growth and, in 2023, entered the CAC 40 index of leading French equities, marking its promotion into the main benchmark of the Paris stock market.[5]
Early life and education
📚 Origins and schooling. Bertrand Michel Marie Joseph Dumazy was born in the industrial city of Tourcoing in northern France on 10 July 1971, the youngest of six children in a practising Catholic family, and spent his childhood there before leaving as a teenager to attend the selective Lycée Sainte-Geneviève preparatory classes near Paris, known as "Ginette".[4] He went on to graduate from ESCP Europe (now ESCP Business School) in 1994 and then broadened his training abroad by earning an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1999, combining French grandes écoles education with American management studies.[4][5]
🌍 Family influences and scouting. Dumazy has recalled how his father, a former officer in French naval aviation who had served in Indochina and North Africa, shared stories of far-flung deployments that instilled in him an early curiosity about the wider world.[5] As a youth he was active in the Scouts and was selected to represent France at a world jamboree in Spain, experiences that he credits with developing his sense of responsibility, team spirit and early leadership skills.[5]
Early career
💼 Consulting and private equity. After graduating from business school, Dumazy began his professional career in 1994 at strategy consultancy Bain & Company, working first in Paris and Milan before helping to open Bain's new Los Angeles office.[4] In 1999 he moved into Private equity as an investment director at BC Partners, where one of his missions took him to Silicon Valley to help design an online strategy for Neopost, a French mailroom and logistics equipment company in which the fund had invested.[4][5]
🚀 Entrepreneurial pivot. Immersion in the late-1990s technology scene led Dumazy in 2000 to found his own start-up, Constructeo, an early collaborative platform for construction-site project management backed by Vinci's venture funds.[4] Within a year Constructeo was acquired by Bricsnet, and Dumazy became Bricsnet's director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, an intense episode he has described as a "pivot point" that taught him how to build a digital business from scratch and to adapt quickly through a merger.[4][5]
Executive roles before Edenred
🏢 Management roles at Neopost. In 2002 Dumazy returned to Neopost as group director of marketing and strategy and, three years later, was promoted to president and CEO of Neopost France, the company's domestic subsidiary.[4] In 2008 he became chief financial officer of the Neopost group, an unusual trajectory from marketing to country management and then finance that he has said gave him a "360-degree" view of the business and exposed him to senior leaders whose "managerial values" and transformation efforts shaped his own approach to change management.[4][5]
🧱 Wendel portfolio companies. Seeking full chief-executive responsibility, Dumazy left Neopost in 2011 to become CEO of Deutsch Group, a manufacturer of high-performance electrical connectors held by investment group Wendel, and led it through its sale to TE Connectivity in 2012.[4] Wendel then moved him to Materis Paints, initially as executive vice-president and later as president and CEO, where he oversaw a restructuring that culminated in the spin-off of other Materis activities and the rebranding of the company as Cromology in 2015, refocusing it on decorative paints.[4]
Chairman and CEO of Edenred
💳 Appointment amid turbulence. In October 2015 the board of Edenred appointed Dumazy as chairman and Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Jacques Stern at a time when the group had issued a profit warning and seen its share price fall sharply over the summer.[4] One of his first major decisions was to complete Edenred's acquisition of Brazilian corporate payments specialist Embratec, then the largest acquisition in the company's history, signalling his willingness to use external growth to reinforce Edenred's position in strategic markets.[4][5]
📈 Strategic plans and growth. In 2016 Dumazy launched the "Fast Forward" strategic plan, aimed at speeding up Edenred's digitalisation and extending its activities beyond meal vouchers into areas such as fleet and mobility solutions, employee engagement platforms and expense management, while at the same time reducing the dividend payout ratio to free more cash for investment.[5] The plan was followed by "Next Frontier" from 2019 and "Beyond" from 2022, which set ambitious targets for high double-digit EBITDA growth and projected revenues of around €5 billion by 2030, and over this period Edenred's share price more than tripled as the company delivered strong organic growth supplemented by targeted acquisitions.[5][6]
🌐 Digital platform positioning. Under Dumazy, Edenred has increasingly presented itself as a technology-driven platform company at the intersection of financial technology, payments and employee benefits, doubling its workforce from around 6,000 employees in 2015 to roughly 12,000 by 2023 and expanding its user base from about 40 million to some 60 million people worldwide.[4][5] The group entered the CAC 40 ESG index in 2022 and the main CAC 40 index in June 2023, milestones that Dumazy has cited as evidence that a French-origin company in a historically non-digital business can reinvent itself as a digital platform while continuing to hire and grow.[4][5]
Compensation, wealth and board roles
💶 Remuneration structure. As the head of a CAC 40 group, Dumazy's remuneration combines fixed and variable elements, with a significant portion tied to long-term performance shares designed to align his interests with those of shareholders.[7] For the 2023 financial year his fixed annual salary was just over €1 million, supplemented by an annual bonus linked to financial and operational targets and an allocation of 53,385 performance shares whose vesting depends on multi-year performance and presence conditions.[7] Advisory shareholder votes on executive pay at Edenred's general meetings have generally approved his packages by large, though not unanimous, majorities, reflecting ongoing debate in France about acceptable levels of executive compensation.[5]
📊 Shareholdings and mandates. Much of Dumazy's personal wealth is tied to his holdings of Edenred shares and share-based instruments; in June 2023, for example, he sold 40,800 Edenred shares at around €61.50 each, realising approximately €2.5 million while retaining a substantial stake in the company.[6] Beyond Edenred he holds several non-executive positions, serving as an independent director of Air Liquide, as an independent director of Neoen—where he chairs the nominations and remuneration committee—and as a long-standing board member of the Harvard Business School Club of France; in 2022 he was also elected president of the ESCP Europe alumni association.[4][5]
Management style and personal life
🏡 Family and private life. Dumazy is married to Françoise and is the father of four children; the family lives in the Paris region, and he generally maintains a low media profile regarding his private life.[8] Colleagues and observers often describe him as both demanding and approachable, setting ambitious "summits to reach" for his teams while insisting that "no one wakes up in the morning thinking they want to do a bad job" and that employees should not feel "invisible" within the organisation.[5]
⚡ Leadership philosophy. Dumazy has characterised his role as that of a "Chief Energizing Officer", aiming for people to leave his meetings with more energy and willingness to change things than when they arrived, and he presents himself as a "serving partner" of the enterprise rather than a distant boss.[5] He emphasises authenticity and consistency—"saying what he will do and doing what he says"—as foundations of trust, promotes what he calls "collective ambition with individual humility" within his executive team and regularly participates in business forums and academic events, reflecting an international outlook shaped by his studies and work experience abroad.[5]
Controversies and challenges
⚖️ Regulatory scrutiny and crises. In December 2019 France's competition authority fined Edenred and three other meal-voucher issuers a total of €415 million for anti-competitive practices on the Ticket Restaurant market, with Edenred's share amounting to €157.1 million; the behaviour under investigation pre-dated Dumazy's arrival as CEO, but it fell to him to manage the legal and reputational consequences, including an appeal and the reinforcement of internal compliance programmes.[4] The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021 then caused a sharp drop in restaurant and office activity in many countries, testing the resilience of Edenred's business model and prompting Dumazy to accelerate the roll-out of digital and mobile payment solutions and to diversify further into corporate mobility and healthcare benefits, moves he later cited as evidence of the group's adaptability.[5]
💬 Diversity debates and ESG expectations. In February 2024 Italian media reported that Edenred's Italian subsidiary was under investigation by prosecutors in Rome for suspected bid-rigging and fraud in public tenders, leading the group under Dumazy's direction to cooperate with the authorities and review its local procedures while investors monitored potential reputational risks.[4] More broadly, Dumazy has taken part in public debate on diversity and gender equality, arguing that meritocracy must remain central and stating, as a father of four, that he would not want his eldest daughter to believe she obtained a job solely because she is a woman, while also calling for mindsets and processes to evolve so that everyone has a fair chance.[5] Within Edenred he has promoted programmes to break the "glass ceiling", contributing to an increase in the share of women among the group's top 400 managers from about 22 percent to close to 40 percent and to gender parity on the executive committee and board, as part of a broader "People, Planet, Progress" corporate social responsibility plan that includes climate commitments aligned with science-based targets and governance arrangements combining a chairman-CEO role with a lead independent director and a majority-independent board.[5][4]
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References
- ↑ "Bertrand Dumazy (Edenred) : Chez Edenred, le seul patron c'est Edenred". Décideurs Magazine.
- ↑ "Bertrand Dumazy (Edenred) : Chez Edenred, le seul patron c'est Edenred". Décideurs Magazine.
- ↑ "Bertrand Dumazy (Edenred) : Chez Edenred, le seul patron c'est Edenred". Décideurs Magazine.
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 "Bertrand Dumazy" (in French). Wikipédia. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 "Bertrand Dumazy (Edenred) : « Chez Edenred, le seul patron c'est Edenred »" (in French). Décideurs Magazine. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Le PDG d'Edenred a vendu des actions pour 2,5 millions d'euros" (in French). Le Revenu. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Décisions du Conseil d'administration du 26 février 2024" (PDF) (in French). Edenred. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ "Profil de Bertrand Dumazy" (in French). Copains d'avant. Retrieved 2025-11-20.