Eurostar: new boss, same as the old boss? Christophe Fanichet to take over as CEO

Announced today, in post 1st December, Christophe Fanichet (bio on Wikipedia) will replace Gwendoline Cazenave as CEO of Eurostar Group (bio on Wayback Machine – she has already been removed from Eurostar’s website). News confirming it from Le Figaro here.

Eurostar then is replacing someone who had worked 20 years for SNCF (Cazenave) with someone who worked 18 years for SNCF (Fanichet). No surprise I suppose, as Eurostar Group is – post merger with Thalys – SNCF Voyageurs (55.75%), CDPQ (19.31%), NMBS/SNCB (18.5%) and Federated Hermes Infrastructure (6.44%). SNCF calls the shots, in other words.

But the name is perhaps a little surprising, given Jean Castex as boss of SNCF dispensed with Fanichet as head of SNCF Voyageurs in July. This Challenges article gives some useful background about the reasons – about how Fanichet’s determination to split SNCF Voyageurs into a more clearly for-profit part, and a PSO operations part, did not gain the favour of either Castex or the trade unions. Although then perhaps giving Fanichet something purely on the profit making side – Eurostar runs no subsidised services – is then a safe bet.

The challenges Eurostar Group faces are considerable – this is no easy job, short to medium term.

Cazenave – despite repeating over and over that Eurostar was to become the backbone of sustainable transport in Europe, and would transport 30 million passengers a year by 2030 (a target that will not be met) – has presided over a Thalys – Eurostar merger that feels half done, has annoyed a lot of people by refusing to contemplate re-opening stations on HS1 in the UK, and ultimately prevented Virgin Trains (and possibly others) making the first steps towards ending Eurostar’s monopoly on the routes to London. OK, 30 new double deck Avelia Horizon trains were ordered, to be on the tracks from 2031, but where the group stands at the end of her four years as CEO looks rather shaky, at least operationally.

Fanichet, short term anyway, needs to first of all work out what to do with the ex-Thalys routes (Paris – Bruxelles – Amsterdam, Paris – Bruxelles – Köln). The 10 oldest PBA trains are knackered, and only the 17 slightly newer PBKA trains are supposed to be renovated again. He could hope the PBA just about hold together until 2031, and then deploy the new Avelia Horizon trains on Paris – Bruxelles first.

But that then leaves the London route in a fragile position. Much of Cazenave’s rhetoric against new entrants on routes to London was that Eurostar was investing anyway, and that a better offer from Eurostar is around the corner. Hard to say that convincingly if your new trains are not going to be heading to London at first. And we are not even sure whether the Avelia Horizon trains can even run through the Channel Tunnel.

This then has a knock on impact on Eurostar’s supposed ideas to run trains from the UK to Germany and Switzerland. To do that is going to need a larger fleet, and that is going to be hard to do while life expired ex-Thalys trains are being replaced. And as stations in Germany and Switzerland lack the necessary terminal facilities for anyone to be able to run there from the UK, we will see how keen Eurostar under Fanichet’s leadership is to grasp this issue.

Tangentially connected to this is also the relationship between Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn. The Paris – Bruxelles – Köln (- Dortmund) route has been the least important for Eurostar for years, and at the same time Deutsche Bahn has been stepping up the number of ICEs it runs from Germany to Belgium – it has added Oostende and Antwerpen as destinations, as well as adding a few extra trains to Bruxelles Midi. While the rhetoric between DB and Eurostar has been positive in recent times, how does Fanichet play this? Back away from Germany even more? Deepen the partnership with DB? Or play hard, and make more of the German routes?

In the UK Eurostar’s flat refusal to contemplate serving Ebbsfleet and Ashford has been a politically foolish move, although I can understand it financially – Eurostar (like anyone else) does not want to make a loss from serving those stations. But with mounting political pressure to serve at least one station in Kent, and even open Stratford for international services for the first time, Fanichet ought to have some strategy here.

And then the biggest storm cloud on the horizon is competition. Virgin Trains (from 2030), and Trenitalia (even from 2029) want to run Channel Tunnel routes to London. It would not surprise me if Trenitalia also contemplated Paris – Bruxelles at some point (because I do not consider Heuro to be serious). Does Fanichet – in typical SNCF style – try to stymie competition at every turn, uses every way possible to prevent opponents getting into Eurostar’s territory? Or does he accept competition will happen, and get Eurostar to up its game, improve its trains, expand its destinations, and sort out its complacent attitude to customer service?

In the end here, whether Fanichet likes it or not, he cannot carry on the Cazenave strategy of drift. Decisions are going to come to him, have to be made by him, whether he likes it or not. Does he play it SNCF style, or is there a different person in there somewhere? From 1 December we are going to find out.

Photo Rights

Christophe Fanichet, Président Directeur Général de SNCF Voyageurs – Diox-In – 22 December 2023 – CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication