Vivendi

Our sustainable development policy

Vivendi’s contribution to sustainable development consists of enabling present and future generations to satisfy their need to communicate, responding to their desire for entertainment, feeding their curiosity, developing their talents, and encouraging exchange among them.

To succeed in that mission, Vivendi is engaged in a responsibility process that takes economic, social, societal and environmental performance related to our business activities and geographic locations into account.

Our sustainable-development policy is defined on the basis of Vivendi’s specific characteristics as a group:

• that is a producer and distributor of content ;
• that is at the very heart of the technological progress enabled by broadband and mobility;
• that is centered on the subscription business model.

The first of these characteristics requires that Vivendi evaluate the opportunities and risks its content and services can give rise to for its various audiences. That is why Vivendi has set apart three specific sustainable-development issues: protecting youth, promoting cultural diversity, and sharing knowledge. These issues have been defined in 2003, as Vivendi was refocusing its strategic business units. They are specific to the group’s production and content distribution activities and are analyzed in light of new uses stemmed by the combination of mobility and broadband. The second characteristic has to do with Vivendi’s need to reconcile the digital revolution, which is radically changing uses and modes of content consumption, with awareness of its stakeholders’ needs (employees, consumers, artists, suppliers, civil society, etc.) and of regulatory requirements. The third raises the question of relations with subscribers – meeting or anticipating their expectations and conducting a rigorous policy of personal data management.

The sustainable development policy is backed up by specific commitments and guidelines.

Responsibility for implementation of this policy lies first with the Chairman of the Management Board. He regularly includes sustainable development issues on the agenda of the Management Board and Risks Committee meetings. He brings together experts from civil society to share an analysis of the development of the group’s activities in terms of these issues. The Sustainable Development department pilots the process and coordinates its monitoring in the subsidiaries. It works in close cooperation with the General Counsel’s office, the Investor Relations department and the Audit department to evaluate, measure and control risks and opportunities in the area of sustainable development. It is backed by a Sustainable Development Committee, created in 2003. The Committee is made up of the persons appointed to deal with questions related to sustainable development in the businesses and the representatives of several functional corporate departments. It meets six times per year.

See the Progress in 2008 & forecast for 2009-2010 table

Vivendi publishes its Sustainable Development Report each year. For the seventh consecutive year, the 2008-2009 edition of Report has been examined and reported on by an external auditor, Salustro Reydel of KPMG International, one of Vivendi’s Auditors, regarding the procedures implemented by the group to report, validate and consolidate social and environmental performance indicators, with verification of a selection of indicators. Vivendi is listed on several sustainable-development indexes (see above). Also, in June 2008, Vivendi was ranked by Goldman Sachs among the three leading European companies in the media sector in terms of economic performance and sustainable-development criteria.