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Interview – Olivier Casanova

Finance and Treasury Manager, PSA Peugeot Citroën

“A more balanced debt profile”

Le Lettre du Trésorier

You were named as the finance and treasury manager of PSA Peugeot Citroen at the beginning of 2010. What have been your main tasks since then?

Olivier Casanova

After the end of the worldwide financial and economic crisis, PSA had a small net debt, but a gross debt and increased financial expenses. Consequently, one of our priorities was to improve our balance sheet, along with other objectives: to manage peak funding in anticipation for 2011 and 2014; to repay in advance the five- year loan of €3bn from the State in April 2009; to increase the average maturity of our financing; reduce the level of financial security to return to their pre-crisis levels; and overall, lower financial expenses. If we keep in mind only the more salient points, the plan of action has three parts. We have decided to renegotiate a syndicated credit of €2.4bn over three years, one year ahead of the maturity date. We have done this with a pool of twenty-one banks, fourteen of which are abroad, two are new and thirteen have raised their level of involvement. The negotiation has ended in an assorted credit of three years with two options to extend it by a year, under conditions which we have deemed satisfactory. In the summer of 2010, we approached the APE [the French Government Shareholding Agency] intent on repaying the loan from the State ahead of the due date, which we did in three stages in 2010 and the beginning of 2011.