France: a company owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in turmoil

A French company, 30% owned by the Canadian fund Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is involved in a case of favoritism that is shaking up the hotel and catering sector in France.

In July 2021, while the Siaci Saint Honoré group and the Burrus group announced their intention to create an independent European leader in insurance brokerage and consulting services, Diot Siaci, the Council of the Teachers’ Pension Plan ‘Ontario (Ontario Teachers’) announced the acquisition of a 30% stake in the combined group, becoming the largest institutional shareholder alongside BPI France. A sensitive investment.

Especially since Diot Siaci has been, for several weeks, at the center of an astonishing affair, the origins of which go back several years. In France, at the beginning of the 2010s, Malakoff Humanis Klésia and OCIRP were designated co-insurers of the HCR (hotels, cafés and restaurants) health plan. The Colonna group is then designated broker and manager, and Axa reinsurer.

Klesia and Malakoff Humanis prepare the ground for Diot Siaci

In 2015, the provident institutions (Klesia and Malakoff Humanis) decided to shatter the governance of the plans. Two years later, the same institutions became both clients and insurers.

At the beginning of the 2020s, while the management agreement becomes a strategic subject for the institutions, in June 2022, Colonna is summoned by the institutions, who present to her the conditions for renewing the management agreements. In nine days, the institutions terminated the Colonna management agreements, without putting forward any real cause.

What does this have to do with Diot Siaci? During the period of renegotiation of management agreements, it was Alain Missoffe, then deputy general manager at Klésia, who was in charge. In April 2022, while discussions were at a standstill, Alain Missoffe became deputy general director of Diot-Siaci.

A tailor-made call for tenders

However, in January 2023, Klésia and Malakoff Humanis chose a new health services manager, following an opaque call for tenders. It is Diot Siaci, led by Cédric Charpentier and co-chaired by Pierre Donnersberg and Christian Burrus, which replaces the Colonna group. The latter’s CV is, however, murky: in July 2022, the sanctions commission of the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) imposed a fine on Christian Burrus as part of the takeover of the company April in 2019.

In the mutual affair, several sources indicate that Diot-Siaci’s offer was not the most competitive. Especially since health management could be outsourced abroad, with contributions collected in France.

If the call for tenders took place on the sly, it seems to have been tailor-made for Diot-Sicaci. The applicants for this call for tenders only had three weeks, an unthinkable deadline for such a file, to formulate their offer. In addition, the social partners (employers and unions) were excluded, the call for tenders indicating that the chosen delegate should not maintain relations with “the professional employer organizations and the employee union organizations of the HCR branch “. Finally, the winner of the call for tenders had no obligation, according to the call tenders, to take over the personnel dedicated to this sector at the Colonna Facility.

This is surprising, even to the French government. The subject is currently being studied by the Minister of Labor. A very political subject, therefore, which risks having consequences for Diot-Siaci and, consequently, for the bottom of Ontario.