Bouygues Construction has appointed Clotilde Solier as chief financial officer of its roughly €12bn (£10.24bn) construction division, a leadership change that lands just weeks after Bouygues UK reported its fourth consecutive annual loss.

Bouygues Construction, part of the French Bouygues group, employs around 32,500 people across more than 60 countries and was brought together with Colas and Bouygues Immobilier on 1 January 2026 to form a new Construction Division generating around €28bn (£23.9bn) in combined sales.

Bouygues UK, the group's UK contracting arm led by chair and chief executive Philippe Bernard, reported a pre-tax loss of £76.1m for 2025, more than double the prior year's £32.3m, on turnover up 15% to £395m, driven largely by phasing on live projects.

Solier succeeds Julien Toqueboeuf, who moves to Equans, another Bouygues subsidiary; she joined the Bouygues group in 2002 and has held finance roles across Bouygues Energies Services, Bouygues Construction and Axione's Concessions division, and will report to Bouygues Construction chief executive Pierre-Eric Saint-André.

A CFO change at group level, arriving just weeks after the UK arm's worst loss on record, signals financial governance being tightened precisely at the point in the group structure where those losses actually surface.

Bouygues UK's cumulative losses have now topped £200m over four years, driven by subcontractor failures, labour availability pressures and building safety liabilities, with non-current provisions climbing from £155m to £202m, almost entirely tied to customer warranty obligations the firm expects to settle over the next 12 years.

For the sector, building safety liabilities are now material enough at a top-12 UK contractor to influence group-level finance leadership decisions rather than being absorbed purely as project-level risk, and other large contractors carrying comparable legacy cladding exposure should expect similar scrutiny of project selection and risk allocation from their own finance functions.

Bernard's own framing points the same way: having flagged a "business rethink" after the loss, the group is now pairing that strategic reset with a new finance leader whose remit explicitly spans risk management, performance and business development support.

Source: Building / Construction Enquirer / Construction Wave