COUV DERCORTIQUÉE gb 14/05/02 0:19 Page 2 THE AXA GROUP IN 2001 COUV DERCORTIQUÉE gb 14/05/02 0:19 Page 3 AXA Corporate Profile AXA: global financial protection and wealth management expertise • 50 million individuals and businesses • €75 billion have placed their trust in us: in revenues to insure their property (vehicles, housing, equipment) to provide health and personal protection • €910 billion coverage for their families or employees Clients Shareholders in assets to manage their personal or corporate assets under management Environment Employees • 140,000 employees and distributors • €1.2 billion worldwide working to deliver the right in net cash earnings solutions and top quality service Community Partners This daisy symbolizes our way • 12,000 volunteers donating their time of doing business. and skills to community organizations Our values, which guide our relationships with our stakeholders, are at the center of the daisy. AXA003 RA 2001 VA Exe 07/05 13/05/02 23:30 Page 1 07 13 26 35 43 60 Contents 07 13 26 35 43 60 02 Letter from the Chairman of the Supervisory Board 04 Interview with the President and CEO 06 The AXA Vision 07 Business: Building a lasting partnership with our clients 13 Expertise: Responding to real needs 26 Culture: Inspiring motivation and encouraging exchange 35 Citizenship: Extending our sphere of accountability 43 Financial strength: Building our business for the long term 60 Operating performance: A difficult year, an encouraging outlook 76 Practical information AXA003 RA 2001 VA Exe 07/05 13/05/02 23:30 Page 2 2 Letter from the Chairman orporate management trends come and go. The first major movement was Taylorism, originally applied in factories and then C later extended to office work. While it led to unprecedented gains in productivity, which in turn increased corporate profits and employee wages, it was also Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times: working man, dehumanized by the machine and the Industrial Age, reduced to performing repetitive and demoralizing tasks. The role of management was limited to supervision. Purchasing power increased, but at the price of monotony. This situation could not last indefinitely. A number of management gurus – the most famous of whom is undoubtedly Peter Drucker – correctly intuited that greater gains in productivity could be achieved by motivating workers than by applying Taylor’s scientific division of labor into a series of tasks. The era of “participatory management by objectives” was born, and none too soon: an increasingly well-educated workforce was beginning to balk at the old working methods. The resulting tension was particularly acute in the 1960s and 1970s. Then along came the Japanese, touting discipline, rigor, and the new buzzwords “quality” and “zero defect.” Process once again took center stage and quality circles bent over their “Ichikawa” quickly sprung up. Once again, in spite of the tendency to bureaucratize the concept of quality, real progress was made. But then Japan Claude Bébéar Chairman of the Supervisory Board became mired in a long-term economic crisis, and its vaunted methods lost their luster as the 1987 financial collapse was succeeded by a series of real estate market fallouts in the early 1990s. Capital came back into fashion: businesses needed equity and therefore had to attract it. And in the same way that “enriched tasks” had earlier been supplanted by the notion of “quality,” CEOs began replacing “quality” with the idea of “shareholder value.” To some extent, this is where things still stand. One gets the impression, from reading quarterly and annual reports or listening to CEOs, that today’s businesses are not in the game to satisfy clients or create wealth for the benefit of all stakeholders, including employees – who are not even mentioned any more – but only to enrich investors, whether faithful or not. AXA003 RA 2001 VA Exe 07/05 13/05/02 23:30 Page 3 AXA GROUP BUSINESS EXPERTISE CULTURE 3 FINANCIAL OPERATING PRACTICAL CITIZENSHIP STRENGTH PERFORMANCE INFORMATION of the Supervisory Board At the same time new planetary concerns have surfaced: What are we doing with the earth? Where will the unchecked race for wealth lead? Are certain working methods morally unacceptable? Is it normal that a few people are getting richer while others are getting poorer? What is the role of the corporation – which is going global, gaining power and dematerializing, all at the same time – in this rapid evolution? The concept of “sustainable development” is an attempt to address these issues. Sustainable development also has its prophets, who say businesses that fail to pay as much attention to clients, employees, and the physical and human environment as to their shareholders are doomed to disappear. And so another fad is born. Like its predecessors, this one is useful and has arrived at just the right time. The notion of “shareholders only” has been replaced by the notion of “stakeholders.” And this makes sense. Businesses need clients to survive, and they need motivated employees to compete in the marketplace. Without shareholders, except in certain types of social market economies, they cannot grow. And if they do not take the environment into account, social life will quickly become unbearable and life on our planet will ultimately become impossible. The so-called ethical or alternative funds proliferating today are a good sign – even if the word “ethics” has come to mean different things to different people. And there is nothing wrong with criticizing corporate behavior, except when ideology or base ulterior motives win out over the truth. AXA believes in sustainable development … within reason. Respect for the environment, respect for the truth, and generous corporate giving are necessary but not sufficient to move businesses and society as a whole forward. Like all business organizations, AXA must begin by creating wealth and making decisions that guarantee its own longevity. This is the most basic prerequisite for sustainable development. Claude Bébéar Chairman of the Supervisory Board AXA003 RA 2001 VA Exe 07/05 13/05/02 23:30 Page 4 4 Interview with the Presid For many observers, 2001 will be remembered as a very dark year. What impact did the year’s events have on AXA? Henri de Castries: The year 2001 was the worst in history for the insurance industry. It was the first time that a global economic recession, financial market depreciation, and a series of severe losses – in particular those related to the tragic terrorist attacks on the US – occurred simultaneously. These were all external events over which the AXA Group had no control whatsoever. Our situation was analogous to that of a ship caught in the eye of a storm. While some of our sails were torn to shreds, the ship came out unscathed and its crew is both stronger and wiser. In the final analysis, this storm left a number of positive elements in its wake. First of all, in the property-casualty sector. The successive jolts served as an effective wake-up call for clients, because they helped shed light on the need to insure risks and to seek coverage from sound and reliable carriers. Adequate cover has a price, Henri de Castries but the good news is that clients are beginning to realize that factors other than price – President of the Management Board such as service quality – are also important. Clients now fully understand the importance of establishing effective prevention programs. Ultimately, this will help reduce both the number of claims and their severity. In the area of savings and investment, market volatility and economic uncertainty have only served to underscore the importance of sound investment advice. Increasingly, our clients will need the advice of qualified specialists to guide them through the waters of finance and investment. Here we have genuine added value to offer. Our core business and our expertise will also grow stronger. Is our positioning as a provider of financial protection and wealth management services still relevant? H. de C: Our strategic choices remain valid. The important decisions we made in 2000 – to buy out minority interests in the US and the UK, to sell the investment bank DL J at the right time, to acquire US asset manager Sanford C. Bernstein and Nippon Dantai in Japan – helped refocus the Group on its core business and key markets. Our positioning in geographic markets where affluence is on the rise is definitely an advantage, and it strengthens our core business fundamentals. The importance of insuring property, protecting human beings, and setting aside money for the future is deeply entrenched in developed nations, and the outlook for these businesses has not changed. The series of mergers we have completed has given us critical mass. The time has now come to focus our energies on attaining operational excellence. AXA003 RA 2001 VA Exe 07/05 13/05/02 23:30 Page 5 AXA GROUP BUSINESS EXPERTISE CULTURE 5 FINANCIAL OPERATING PRACTICAL CITIZENSHIP STRENGTH PERFORMANCE INFORMATION ent and CEO So you remain basically optimistic. Do you think that today’s difficulties can be transformed into opportunities in the long run? H. de C: Absolutely. The AXA Group is profitable and its revenues and business continue to grow. Our financial structure is sound, and the Group’s key subsidiaries have excellent financial strength ratings. But we also need to be realistic. We are coming off a speculative bubble, and it is important not to be overly reliant on market appreciation to boost earnings. Going forward, success will necessarily depend on our ability to improve operational performance. We have acquired an extraordinary level of expertise, which will support our bid to improve by offering our clients better service, acquiring additional market share, reducing operating costs and improving underwriting results.