Doing business transformation numbers
France’s Orange Group has appointed Laurent Martinez as its news executive director in charge of Finance, Performance and Development from 1 September 2023. Martinez was enticed away from railway company Alstom, where he is currently CFO. Jean-Michel Thibaud, Deputy Chief Financial Officer of the Group, will act as interim manager in the meantime.
Since July 2018, as Alstom’s CFO and executive committee member Martinez has been instrumental in the transformation of Alstom. A graduate in electrical and telecommunications engineering with a Master’s degree in finance and accounting, his career took off at Astrium, the defence and space subsidiary of Airbus, after which he was upgraded to the parent company, where he was known for his command of steering and controlling. His talents were then channelled into heading up the Airbus Services Business Unit in 2015.
Orange Group CEO Christel Heydemann, pictured, said this experience in business transformation of a massive multi-national will be of great value to France’s flagship mobile operator as it embarks on “the deployment of our new strategic plan [to] Lead the Future”.
Heydemann was appointed as Orange Group CEO in January 2022, having been been Executive Vice President for Europe at Schneider Electric one of Orange’s industrial collaboration partners working on 5G uses cases. Martinez will effectively be the full-time replacement for Ramon Fernandez, said TelecomTV, after Martinez announced his departure at the end of last year.