URW board and structural changes aim to create more agile group

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 8, 2021

Shopping malls giant Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) has made some big changes to its structure with an extended management board and a new group organisation “to bolster its agility in responding to the current challenges and to prepare for the future”.

It means Chief Investment Officer Olivier Bossard and Chief Resources Officer Astrid Panosyan are joining chairman/CEO Jean-Marie Tritant and CFO Fabrice Mouchel on the management board. 

Bossard will be “in charge of leading the group’s deleveraging effort through disposals as well as overseeing the value creation strategy based on a targeted allocation of resources”.

And Panosyan’s task is to spearhead the “organisational transformation of the group to swiftly increase its effectiveness and efficiency, while focusing its resources on its essential activities and continuing to lead URW’s ambitious ‘Better Places 2030 CSR strategy”.

The company said it all means decentralisation of the group with regions being empowered and the corporate centre being simplified.

Part of that will be four new enlarged European regions, while the US “will be empowered to ground their operations on local market dynamics and customers as well as to deliver on value creation”.

Each of the regions will be led by a regional COO who will report directly to the group’s CEO.

The company’s corporate centre will now “primarily focus on strategic allocation of resources and performance monitoring”. 

The CFO will be in charge of “adjusting the finance function to the new organisation so as to reinforce the group’s controlling capacities and effectively monitor URW’s performance”.

At the same time, Michel Dessolain has been temporarily named Chief Customer Officer, supervising strategic marketing, innovation, data, digital marketing and new revenues. 

A permanent CCO will be recruited during this year and between Dessolain and the newcomer, the aim is to “bring in new skill sets to make URW a more customer, digital, and data-driven company and harness future growth”.

A further change will see the management board being supported by an executive committee composed of the four board members, the five regional COOs and executive MDs, under the chairmanship of the CEO.