Dear Partners of the Talent Club,

We are sad to announce that Philippe Foriel Destezet passed away (too fast and too soon) on June 27th in a hospital in Paris. Philippe was 85.

Philippe was not only our key Partner in The Talent Club Family for 2 years ( with You First Sports, Between Technologies, Lincoln Executive Search, The Bozz, Sport Carriere, Hopla Software, GammaUX, Digital Jobs, The Influencer, Seven, Tandem, Eventologies, Knot, United Heroes) as our major Investor.

He was our point of reference for the last 30 years as the exceptionally successful and inclusive entrepreneur able to create in 30 years the worldwide Leader in employment services (25 Billion Sales, 5000 offices in 65 countries, Listed in New York, Paris and Zurich), ranging from

  • temporary work services to permanent placement,
  • engineering to IT consulting
  • outplacement to career management services,

Philippe always behaved with a perfect education and a smile for everyone, exporting enthusiasm and importing stress.

Philippe started in 1964 in Lyon under the ECCO brand with a small agency composed of a Branch Manager (himself as a sales developer) and a small team to guarantee agility and quality of service (recruitment manager & administration manager).

Thanks to his drive, ECCO became the leader in France and then Philippe started to conquer the world: Belgium, Switzerland, UK, Canada, South East Asia. USA, Japan, Australia, South Africa…

But the most successful countries outside France (great success thanks to his partner Philippe Beauviala), were Italy and Spain in terms of growth and profitability: this was indeed a very special period as professionals for many of us, with the drive of Philippe Marcel as Head of Europe and us running behind!

  • Spain = >50,000 people at work daily & Adecco #1. From 0 to 1 B Sales (1990/2000)
  • Italy= >50,000 people at work daily & Adecco #1. From 0 to 1 B sales (1997/2001)

In 1996, ECCO merged with ADIA and Philippe created the #1 globally (where Miguel acted as Head of Southern Europe and Latin America Board Member, Luis as Head of Marketing & Sales, Franco as Head of Technology and Innovation, Juan as Intern, Sandra as first CFO Spain and myself as Branch/Regional Manager - Country Manager Italy& CEO from 1990 to 2005). Fx Bellon was also a great part of the growth race and is today present in TTC.

Miguel, Franco, Luis, Sandra and I had the honor to work at Adecco for and with him and we were always inspired by Philippe s values:

  • Taste for growth thanks to commercial exemplarity from each Leader and cellular division growth model that allowed extra sales before investing into extra costs.
  • Focus on quality of service for companies and high satisfaction for Talents thanks to full responsibility given to small local teams, hence no burocracy.
  • Work by objectives and reward by results : thanks high investments in best-in-class education, long term incentives on value creation and internal promotion at accelerated pace, hence total alignment of interests.
  • Right to make mistakes but obligation to act : With Philippe, we always felt we were entrepreneurs

Philippe´s vision, values and trust in people will be always in our heart and a model (and a soul) for The Talent Club and for us as human beings.

Let's have all together a collective thought for Philippe – a great entrepreneur and a great person - and his 4 four children.

Jerome Caille, CEO of The Talent Club