In private, Véronique Bédague, CEO of the Nexity real estate group, readily repeats that the developer has hit rock bottom and that, after “a financial low point” expected in 2024, a “reacceleration” is taking shape in 2025. However, faced with the violent crisis facing the construction and real estate development sectors since 2023, the management of Nexity has decided to “resize” the group. After announcing in February that she was going to resort to a social plan, she revealed the details on Thursday April 25.
The French leader in real estate development, with production of just under fifteen thousand housing units in 2023, has announced the elimination of nearly five hundred positions, or 20% of the workforce in its development-development and land development activity. build, which also integrates the support functions of the group’s holding company. But, taking into account the departures that have already taken place, compared to 2022, the workforce in this activity “will have been reduced by a total of 28%”warns the group in a press release.
The exceptional costs generated by this reorganization are expected to reach around 50 million euros in 2024, but the group hopes to see savings from 2025, which will represent a full-year cost reduction of 45 million euros. To this plan are added other measures “on general and real estate costs”, representing a total reduction in the cost base expected to nearly 95 million euros over a full year. In this difficult moment, the group has also obtained from its banking and bondholder partners a release from its financial ratios until the end of the 2024 financial year.
Market turnaround in fall 2022
“These job cuts are in addition to the conventional terminations and “dismissals for insufficiency” which have taken place over the past year. Since December 2022, we have lost four hundred jobs”, explains Emmanuel Brie, CFDT union representative and employee of the promotion and construction branch. “Now, negotiations on the departure conditions are beginning. They must last four months. Let’s hope that the PES [plan de sauvegarde de l’emploi] is well sized and that this is not the start of a series, because the figures for the first quarter are not encouraging. » “For the employees who remain, we will have to find motivation. Salary increases cap at 1.1% on average in 2024, and for the past year, there is no profit-sharing or participation. »
Véronique Bédague has not hidden the difficulties of the profession since the market downturn in the fall of 2022. The brutal increase in interest rates decided by the European Central Bank (ECB) to stem the surge in inflation , after the start of the war in Ukraine, drastically reduced the purchasing power of households, who massively refused to embark on a real estate project.
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