Teleperformance Announces Major Restructuring, Call Center Closings in France

Teleperformance France, a subsidiary of the Teleperformance Group, the world leading provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services, is presenting today to the Works Council a restructuring project to reinforce the group’s competitiveness.

Teleperformance France has been weakened by a drop in demand in its key markets and the loss of major sales contracts in 2009. The company incurred an operating loss of EUR36 million in 2009, representing more than 12% of its revenues.

The first cost control measures implemented in 2009 (fixed cost reduction and voluntary redundancy plan) haven’t enabled the company to recover during the economic crisis, and the results have worsened. Today, Teleperformance France is facing a situation of structural production overcapacity.

In order to restore its profitability and protect the group’s competitiveness, Teleperformance France needs to streamline its production facilities and is planning to reduce its activities from 22 to 14 contact centers. The 14 contact centers are Belfort, Bordeaux, Guyancourt, Laval, Lyon, Le Mans, Montpellier, Niort, Orleans, Paris, Reims, Toulouse and Villeneuve d’Ascq (2).

The return to break even will require a reduction of 15% of the employee headcount. The restructuring project being submitted today to the works council includes:

The closing of 4 centers with job redundancies: Marseille (25), Pantin (149), Rennes (194) and Tours (51).
The consolidation — the operations merging two centers into one — of four centers reducing their headcount: in Le Mans (41), Lyon (169), Orleans (71) and Toulouse (61).
The downsizing of the Bordeaux center, reducing the headcount by 69.

The submitted project will be reviewed by the workforce representatives within the framework of an information/consultation procedure. The company has proposed a meeting with trade union organisations on July 8, 2010 to open negotiations on an agreement method ("Accord de methode").

Jean-Herve Jenn, CEO Teleperformance France underlines: "The company is aware of the social impact of this reorganization and we wish to implement a job protection plan aimed at ensuring the repositioning, both internally and externally, of each impacted employee according to the ambitions and experience of each individual."

ABOUT TELEPERFORMANCE
Teleperformance (NYSE Euronext Paris: FR 0000051807), the world’s leading provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services, has been serving companies around the world rolling out customer acquisition, customer care, technical support and debt collection programs on their behalf. In 2009, the Teleperformance Group achieved EUR1.848 billion revenues (US$2.6 billion — average exchange rate at December 31, 2009: EUR1 = US$1.39). The Group operates about 83,000 computerized workstations, with more than 112,000 employees (Full-Time Equivalents) across 276 contact centers in 51 countries and conducts programs in more than 66 different languages and dialects on behalf of major international companies operating in various industries. www.teleperformance.com