As for all the new AvtoVAZ bosses, a surprise awaits Yves Caracatzanis: a huge aquarium installed for ages in the office of CEO at the top of the blue tower overlooking the huge 600-hectare complex of the post-Soviet Toliatti factory.
Born in Marseille, married to a Corsican, this frequent visitor of the Island of Beauty and its marine wonders will appreciate this touch of exoticism in the gray of the mythical builder of the Lada, at the edge of the Volga about 1,000 kilometers to the south. is from Moscow.
The pool of Renault bosses in Romania
“Avtovaz, I know it well! Yves Caracatzanis, CEO since June 1 of the Russian automotive giant controlled by Renault, has already been posted in Moscow: between 2013 and 2016, he was industrial director of the “supply chain” of Renault for the Eurasia region. As such, he often went to the Lada factory. “With my wife and daughter, we are very happy to be back in Russia …”, he told the “Echos” in Toliatti in April, a few weeks before taking over AvtoVAZ. And the estate of his friend Nicolas Maure.
To manage Avtovaz, Renault plays indeed stability. The group, which, after the recent second stage of the Russian manufacturer’s recapitalization, saw its share in the capital rise to 51%, named in fact the two last directors of its Romanian subsidiary Dacia. Chance of musical chairs among the rising values of the hierarchy of Renault, Nicolas Maure and Yves Caracatzanis have succeeded in Romania and then at the head of AvtoVAZ.
“The changes are therefore in continuity! The two men, ironically, met together at Toliatti during a spring session to prepare for the transition. “There is a lot of commonality between the Romanian and Russian sites, both heavyweights in the national economy,” insists Yves Caracatzanis, who led Dacia for two years from 2016.
From Bossard Consultants to Hewlett-Packard
This training engineer began his career after graduating from the Ecole Centrale de Paris at Bossard Consultants. Then he joined Hewlett-Packard. His entry into Renault dates from 1992, with a post of logistics organization project manager.
Yves Caracatzanis then went on for ten years at the Flins factory, becoming in turn head of manufacturing workshop, head of the painting department, head of the quality department … In 2005, after having worked on the development of the Clio III, he took the direction of engineering prototype vehicles before becoming director of the “supply chain” in 2010. A career led by this engineer, who at 54, hair and eyebrow pepper and salt, must now develop one of the jewels of the Russian industry.
Renault’s rules impose a three-month hibernation on Yves Caracatzanis. But before taking office, he did not hide his enthusiasm for his new mission and his new country. Especially since, of Greek origin, he is orthodox and therefore has, culturally, much to (re) discover with the Russians.
On the professional front, he inherits an AvtoVAZ much different from that recovered by Nicolas Maure in 2016. The latest results of AvtoVAZ have confirmed that it really goes up the slope. Far from four years in the red and a descent into hell, when the recession in Russia had reduced the purchasing power of citizens and sealed not only the sales of Lada, specialists in the entry-level, but also profitability of their production.
36,000 employees
Yves Caracatzanis, third foreign CEO of AvtoVAZ (after Nicolas Maure, but also, previously, the Swede Bo Andersson), should benefit from the acceleration of the recovery of the automotive market in Russia. A boom that, interrupted by the crisis, is now very promising, this country can generate potential sales of more than three million vehicles per year.
Yves Caracatzanis promises a “smooth transition”, without the waves of dismissals that have, in the past, angered the Russian state.
With some 36,000 employees (far from the 150,000 in the great Soviet era), the giant site of Toliatti remains indeed under the tight control of the Kremlin, via the mighty conglomerate public Rostec, minority shareholderbut decisive actor. It is, with Carlos Ghosn, his boss Sergei Chemezov who approved the appointment of the new CEO.
This former KGB spy, like his friend, Vladimir Putin, is the eye of the Kremlin at AvtoVAZ. In Toliatti, the fish of the aquarium of his office will not be the only ones to observe Yves Caracatzanis closely …