INSIGHT 2|2019

4 | Prysmian Group I N S I G H T FOCUS ON PRYSMIANNORTH AMERICA HAS ACHIEVED 90-95% OF MERGER SYNERGIES AND MANAGED A SMOOTH INTEGRATION North America CEOMassimo Battaini says preparation and teamwork are key to being ahead of merger integration timetable in the region. T he challenge was clear: managing a double integration while reaping the best know how of Prysmian and General Cable legacies in North America to build an even stronger company. NA CEOMassimo Battaini explains that it couldn’t have been done without listening to both sides and picking the smartest solutions. WHEREARE YOUONYOUR TIMETABLEWITHTHE PRYSMIANGROUP/GENERALCABLE INTEGRATION? Without being presumptuous, we are near our goal. We jump-started the integration process a few months ahead of June 6 by focusing on 3 essential value streams. The first, preserving the customer relationship, our greatest asset. We re-organized our agents in the field, so we’d have just one face in front of our customers. This helped establish clarity for the market. The second, focused on protecting our revenue, which included mitigating risk within the business by leveraging our cross-selling opportunities given our newly combined product portfolio, innovations, commercial strength and manufacturing capabilities. The third, focused on capturing the cost saving synergies; addressing the overlap and redundancies within the organization, leveraging our new scale, combining production, and consolidating our products. Twelve months down the road, I’d say that we have achieved 90-95% of cost synergies and implemented significant commercial cross sales. Now we are working on further integrating our internal systems, such as SAP, which will take 2 1/2 years. Without this strong team spirit, we wouldn’t havemade somuch progress. Massimo Battaini, North America Chief Executive Officer at Prysmian Group