Guillaume Poitrinal, born December 22, 1967, in Châtellerault (Vienne), is a Franco-Luxembourgish entrepreneur and business leader.

Guillaume Poitrinal
Born (1967-12-22) 22 December 1967 (age 56)
Alma materHEC Paris
OccupationCEO of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (2005-2013)

From 2005 to 2013, he headed the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield group. He is the youngest manager of a CAC 40 company when the group joined the index in 2007.

In 2014, he founded Woodeum with Philippe Zivkovic, a low-carbon housing developer using cross-laminated timber as an innovative construction material, then in 2017, WO2, a low-carbon real estate developer of new generation offices.[1]

Also in 2014, he created an investment fund specializing in European real estate, Icamap, which he still chairs today.

Since 2017, he has been the president of the Fondation du patrimoine.

Biography

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Son of a surgeon and a clinic director, Guillaume Poitrinal completed his secondary studies and preparatory classes at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris. He graduated from HEC Paris in 1989.[2]

He began his career in the mergers and acquisitions department of Morgan Stanley as an analyst, from 1992 and 1995, in London then in Paris. In 1995, he was recruited by Léon Bressler, boss of the Unibail group, as project manager. In 1997 he was promoted to director of development and planning. The following year, he became financial director, then director of the Offices division. In 2002, he was promoted to deputy general manager in charge of all divisions and finance.[3]

In April 2005, Léon Bressler left the management of the group to become non-executive chairman and Guillaume Poitrinal became general director. Upon the departure of Léon Bressler on April 27, 2006, Guillaume Poitrinal became president and CEO of the group.[4]

On June 18, 2007, Unibail joined the CAC 40 index and, aged 39, Guillaume Poitrinal was the youngest director of a CAC 40 company.[5]

On June 25, 2007, the Unibail group merged with the Dutch group Rodamco and became a public limited company with a management board and supervisory board. Guillaume Poitrinal then evokes a “logical union”. He became chairman of the board of directors of the new group, Unibail-Rodamco.

He left the group on April 25, 2013. During his mandate, the size of the group was multiplied by four. The stock price increased from 93 euros to 175 euros and 80.3 euros of dividend per share were distributed, ensuring an annual performance for the investor of 15.1% on average, compared to +3.3% for the CAC40 and +4.5% for EPRA, the real estate sector index in Europe.[6]

With Philippe Zivkovic, in 2014 he founded a real estate development company specializing in low-carbon wooden housing, Woodeum, then in 2017, WO2, a low-carbon developer of new generation offices. In June 2020, with his Icawood and WO2 fund, he launched the construction of Arboretum, in Nanterre Paris La Défense, the largest wooden office campus project in the world (126,000 m2).[7]

On October 23, 2013, François Hollande tasked him with leading the simplification shock.[8] He was president until January 2015. Then he chaired the “planning and building” workshop until May 2017, the objective of which is to reduce the administrative and tax procedures to which French companies are subject. In February 2016, the president of the Île-de-France region Valérie Pécresse appointed him president of the Strategic Council for Attractiveness and Employment. He is president until the end of 2018. In April 2017, he was appointed president of the Fondation du patrimoine, succeeding Charles de Croisset.[9]

Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, he launched the popular sponsorship project “Loto du Patrimoine” in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Communication, Française des Jeux and Stéphane Bern.[10]

Books

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  • Leadership : Perspectives sur l'exercice du pouvoir dans les entreprises - Éric-Jean Garcia, preface by Erhard Friedberg - Éditions de Boeck, 2011
  • Plus vite ! La France malade de son temps, Paris, Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2012 ISBN 978-2-246-79991-7
  • L'immobilier demain : La Real Estech, des rentiers aux entrepreneurs - Robin Rivaton et Vincent Pavanello, Preface by Guillaume Poitrinal, Editions Dunod, 2017
  • Les 100 mots du patrimoine - Guy Sallavuard, Preface by Guillaume Poitrinal, Editions Que Sais-je, 2021
  • Pour en finir avec l'apocalypse - une écologie de l'action, Paris, Éditions Stock, 2022

References

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