Michel Landel was born on 7 November 1951 in

Meknes Meknes ( ar, مكناس, maknās, ; ber, ⴰⵎⴽⵏⴰⵙ, amknas; french: Meknès) is one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco, located in northern central Morocco and the sixth largest city by population in the kingdom. Founded in the 11th c ...

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

. He was the CEO, Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee of

Sodexo Sodexo (formerly Sodexho Alliance) is a French food services and facilities management company headquartered in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux. It has 412,088 employees as of 2021, operates in 55 countries and serves 100 million custome ...

until January 2018.

Biography

After graduating from the European Business School, Michel Landel worked for Chase Manhattan Bank and then for the Poliet Group. He decided to leave the banking world and joined Sodexo in 1984 as Operations Manager for Eastern and Northern Africa. In 1989 he was promoted to Operations Manager for the

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

region.http://www.worldofceos.com/dossiers/michel-landel In barely ten years, he propelled the company to fourth place in the

catering Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site or a site such as a hotel, hospital, pub, aircraft, cruise ship, park, festival, filming location or film studio. History of catering The earliest account of major services be ...

services market. In 1999, he managed the merger with Marriott Management Services; the resulting Sodexho Marriott Services became the world leader in its sector. On 1 September 2005, he was promoted to CEO of

, taking over from the company’s founder,

Pierre Bellon Pierre Bellon (24 January 1930 – 31 January 2022) was a French billionaire businessman, the founder of Sodexo, a multinational food service and facilities management company. Early life Pierre Bellon earned a degree from HEC Paris. Career Be ...

, who remained as Chairman of the group. Following the dollar's fall relative to the Euro in that year, Sodexo experienced two years of declining operating profits. Michel Landel’s strategy was therefore to diversify Sodexo’s service offer beyond

services and to expand the group’s presence in emerging countries. In 2012, he explained "While food services rose by an average of 3.5%, other services grew by 7.8% and their share increased from 18% to 25% of sales in four years." He has also initiated a number of actions aimed at contributing to the

economic and social development Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their loc ...

of countries where

operates. These include STOP Hunger, a programme fighting hunger and

malnutrition Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...

, which is active in 42 countries. In 2018,

Danone Danone S.A. () is a French multinational corporation, multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of t ...

's Board of Directors appointed Michel Landel as Lead Independent Director and Chairman of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee.'' Since May 2019, Michel Landel has been an Independent Director of the French company Legrand.

Awards

Michel Landel has been honoured with two

awards An award, sometimes called a distinction, is something given to a recipient as a token of recognition of excellence in a certain field. When the token is a medal, ribbon or other item designed for wearing, it is known as a decoration. An award ...

for his actions in favour of

diversity Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to: Business *Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce *Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers * ...

in companies: * CEO Leadership Award for Diversity Best Practices * CEO Advocate of the Year from the Asian Enterprise Magazine He is also a Chevalier (Knight) of the French Order of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...

. In November 2015,

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Business Review ranks Michel Landel 67th best-performing CEO in the world.The Best-Performing CEOs in the World
Harvard Business Review, November 2015

Private life

Michel Landel is married and has three children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Landel, Michel 1951 births Living people