peugeot family

Hi

might be off topic, but was wondering if someone might be able to tell me
how the family decide what happens to Peugeot. I was reading an article from
1999 i think, about a possible merger with Daimler, and it thought that the
control was held by up to 100 members of the family and that some were in
favour and others against. Does any of the Peugeots have the final say, or
is it done democratically across all the surviving members?

cheers

fathippy

 

Hi,

the
Oh, shit, I would have been disgusted if they ever merged with Daimler AG !

OK. From what I know, I'll try to explain this.
As with many old industrial or business families, each member (babies, and
so on) have some parts of stock. This may lead to a very volatile
capitalization, like with the Guichard family, where there were over 400
stock owners in 1999. Wow.
I guess that's the same with the Peugeots.
Some of them are leading divisions of Peugeot. Some of them are acting into
the Surveillance Comitee - one of the leading mechanism which comes with the
definition of a company status called here "Société Anonyme" (SA - should
match the UK's PLC, IIRC).
Theorically (I'm afraid I can't be affirmative on this point) the family's
stock owners (or holders, whatever term you prefer) can be grouped into an
association which will represent them in the general assemblies (AG,
Assemblée Générale), usually comes once a year with "all*" stock holders
invited to participate. In these AGs they do speech on the groups results,
dividends per stock, perspectives, and many other things - electing the CEO
for example (JM Folz at the moment).

At the date of 12/31/2003, the Peugeot family held 29.17% of the PSA group
capital, and 43.14% of the vote rights (which are important in the AG).

I'm afraid I can't tell you more, I don't know the Peugeots themselves, and
I don't want to divulgate the very few information I've got.

* C'mon, that's the the fucking idiot with 15 stocks in PSA which is invited
to the AG !