Pierre Bellon (24 January 1930 – 31 January 2022) was a French

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

businessman, the founder 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 ...

, a multinational food service and facilities management company.

Early life

Pierre Bellon earned a degree from

HEC Paris HEC Paris (french: École des hautes études commerciales de Paris) is a business school, and one of the most prestigious and selective grandes écoles, located in Jouy-en-Josas, France. HEC offers Master in Management, MSc International Fi ...

Career

Bellon joined the ''Société d'exploitations hôtelières, aériennes, maritimes et terrestres'' in 1958. He started as a managing assistant, and rose to become CEO of the company. In 1966, he founded Sodexho SA (renamed Sodexo in 2008).

supplies a variety of auxiliary services for thousands of institutions, including schools, hospitals, retirement centers, corporate and government offices, armed forces, recreational facilities, and correctional institutions. Sodexo is a public traded company on

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and Paris exchanges. Bellon relinquished the group CEO position of Sodexo in 2005, but continued as the chairman of the company until January 2016, when his daughter

Sophie Bellon Sophie Bellon (born 1961) is a French businesswoman, and the chairwoman of Sodexo, a company founded by her father Pierre Bellon. Early life Sophie Bellon earned a degree from EDHEC EDHEC Business School (french: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerci ...

succeeded him as chairman. In 1987, he contributed to the creation of the non-profit ''Association Progrès du Management'', which purpose is to focus on ''the progress of the company through the progress of its leaders''. His autobiography is entitled ''I Have Had a Great Time''.

Personal life and death

Bellon was married, with four children, and lived in Paris. He died on 31 January 2022, at the age of 92.Sodexo : Pierre Bellon, l’ogre des cantines, est mort

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellon, Pierre 1930 births 2022 deaths HEC Paris alumni French billionaires French company founders Businesspeople from Marseille Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur