L’former CEO of SNCF, Guillaume Pépy, “will be proposed to chair the new board of directors” of Orpea, said Sunday evening the private group of retirement homes, in turmoil since the publication in early 2022 of the investigation book The Gravediggers. “A profound renewal of the board of directors will be proposed at the next general meeting”, with the arrival of five new independent directors, including Guillaume Pepy, specifies Orpea in a press release. If elected, the former leader of the SNCF “will be proposed” to the presidency of the new board of directors.
The appointments as independent directors of Guillaume Pepy, currently Chairman of Initiative France, Isabelle Calvez, Director of Human Resources for the Veolia Group, John Glen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of BIC SA until May and David Hale, Chief Executive Officer of Guerbet Group, will be submitted to the vote of the shareholders at the general meeting on July 28.
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Laurent Guillot, who has spent a large part of his career at Saint-Gobain and CEO of Orpea since Friday, will also be proposed as a new director at this general meeting, adds Orpea. Philippe Charrier, who chaired the board of directors before the scandal broke and who “provisionally assumed the general management of Orpea from February to June 2022”, “chosen to put an end to his mandate as director at the outcome of the next meeting.
The Orpea group, the French giant of retirement homes and private clinics, has been plunged into turmoil since the publication in January of a book-investigation, The Gravediggers, which documents mistreatment of residents, accounting and administrative fraud, and questionable human resources practices. Following a report that the government issued to justice at the end of March, a preliminary investigation was opened in April for institutional mistreatment and financial offences.
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The investigators are also digging into more than forty complaints, the majority of which were filed collectively in early April by families of nursing home residents, who accuse Orpea of ”endangering the lives of others” and of ” manslaughter. The Orpea share has tumbled since The Gravediggers and the ensuing scandal, going from 86 euros at the end of January to some 22 euros at the end of June.