Rami Baitiéh

Rami Baitiéh

French businessman of Lebanese ancestry

Rami Baitiéh is a French-Lebanese company director, currently Chief executive officer of Morrisons supermarkets. Born in Lebanon, he arrived in France at the age of 17 and began his career with Carrefour in 1995, joining the head office a few years later.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Rami Baitiéh (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

About

Transferred to Poland in 2006, he joined Turkey after five years. He then successively managed Carrefour's subsidiaries in Taiwan, Argentina and Spain before taking over the management of Carrefour France in July 2020. He launched a plan to transform the company, with a focus on reducing its dependence to hypermarkets and increasing the share in revenues of convenience stores and organic food. In November 2023, he became managing director of retailer Morrisons in the UK.

From Wikipedia’s article on Rami Baitiéh, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Early life and education

  • 2008 to 2010Université du Québec à Montréal Master of Business Administration3
  • 2008 to 2010SGH Warsaw School of Economics Master of Business Administration3

Born in Lebanon, Rami Baitiéh arrived in France at the age of seventeen and studied at the Compiègne business school. He graduated top of his class, with a master's degree in accounting and finance. He later joined the military reserve of the French Air and Space Force, in which he is now a colonel. In 2012, he obtained a Master of Business Administration from the University of Quebec in Montreal.

From Wikipedia’s article on Rami Baitiéh (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: business executive.7

  • Since 2023Chief executive, Morrisons5
  • 2020 to 2023Executive director, Carrefour France6
  • 1995 to 2023Worked at Carrefour4

Career at Carrefour

Rami Baitiéh began his career in 1995 at Carrefour, as a department manager assistant in the Compiègne hypermarket. During this period, he developed a computer tool for supplies management to replace the paper-based schedule, which took several hours a day to fill. The tool was later deployed in other stores in the region and subsequently across the country. Following this, and after being noticed by Daniel Bernard, then chairman of the board of directors, he joined the head office as a buyer, and later became head of non-merchandise products.

In 2006, Rami Baitiéh moved to Poland, where he held the position of director of IT, supplies and strategy. Five years later, he was transferred to Turkey as merchandise and supply chain director. During this period, he introduced the 5/5/5 method, before taking up the same position in Romania, after two and a half years. This method consists in basing the company's organisation on fifteen points of customer relationship management and customer experience on which to concentrate efforts: five for trust, five for services and five for proximity. The aim is reached by offering strong promises and guarantees, such as immediate refunds with no time limit on non-food products.

In February 2015, Rami Baitiéh left Turkey to manage Carrefour Taiwanese subsidiary. His tenure there focused on food safety, a key issue in the local market. Spotted by Alexandre Bompard, then Carrefour's new CEO, Rami Baitiéh was sent to Argentina, and then in Spain, the group’s third-largest country in terms of sales, where he implemented similar management principles.

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Executive director of Carrefour France

In July 2020, Rami Baitiéh became executive director France of Carrefour. He also joined the group's board of directors. In this role, he took charge of Carrefour's first and main subsidiary, which accounted at that time for 48% of the group's €80 billion in sales, with 105,000 employees and 5,424 shops, including 248 hypermarkets. He applied the same methods as in the previous countries, communicating his email address to all employees and on the Carrefour website. He imposed the relocation of the manager's office to the centre of each market and the sharing of his contact details with customers, or the presence of notebooks at checkouts to record all requests.

Rami Baitiéh launched the Top project, which involved replacing the multi-skilling of employees with specialisation in three teams: front, data and back. The aim was, once again, to reduce problems for customers, such as stock-outs. This led particularly to the abandonment of shopping trolleys with tokens, deemed as irritating by customers. On his arrival, Rami Baitiéh also set up the School for Leaders, an internal training programme open to all employees, to give them the opportunity to progress up the hierarchy. He had previously set up this process in Argentina and then in Spain, after a cashier complained that it was administratively cumbersome to progress internally.. He also made it his duty to visit the Group's supplier factories twice a month.

Concerning commercial development, Rami Baitiéh's term at the head of Carrefour France was mainly devoted to the transition from a model focused on the hypermarket, which appeal among the public was waning but which he had nevertheless to straighten up, to a model focused on e-commerce and small business. He also aimed to expand the organic products and private label offers. To this end, he initiated the takeover of Bio c'bon, an organic farming retailer, after it filed for bankruptcy in 2020. He also developed franchises and lease management, with the recovery of Carrefour's market share as a result. Lease management was thus the preferred model for the development of Supeco, a discount chain launched in September, prior to the arrival of Rami Baitiéh at the head of Carrefour France. He also opened up Carrefour France to new outlets to diversify revenues, such as car rental.

From Wikipedia’s article on Rami Baitiéh (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • CitizenshipFrance, Lebanon8

Sources

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