Between October 21-22, 2026, the historic Palais Brongniart in Paris became a meeting point for Sonepar’s leaders, strategic suppliers, shareholders and families.
Once home to the Paris Stock Exchange and, more recently, Team USA House during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Palais Brongniart has long been a place where business, ideas and major international moments converge.
Across the Sonepar Strategic Supplier Summit and Future Generations Day, each event approached the future from a different perspective, while sharing a common thread: How Sonepar can continue to transform its business, strengthen collaboration across its ecosystem, and prepare the people and skills needed for the years ahead.
At the heart of the event was the Sonepar Transformation Experience: an immersive exhibition with booths dedicated to the core, interlocked areas of our strategic journey: Sustainability, Supply Chain, Enterprise Intelligence, Supplier Collaboration, and Omnichannel Experience.
The Sonepar Strategic Supplier Summit: reshaping the future of our industry
Since 2002, Sonepar has organized a Strategic Supplier Summit approximately every five years. The Group brings together its partners to share its strategic priorities, discuss key industry trends and explore opportunities for future growth. The Summit provides a forum for Sonepar to engage with its partners on the major technological and market developments shaping the electrical industry.
This year the event also featured global technology and AI leaders, including Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, and Maurice Lévy, emeritus Chairman of Publicis group. Together with former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, they joined the panel “AI: Who Will Win the Next Decade?” to examine the economic, technological, and geopolitical shifts likely to shape the years ahead. In addition, Sonepar was proud to have testimonies from Judson Althoff, CEO Microsoft Business, Laurence Parisot, Chairwoman at Citi, and Nigel Vaz, CEO at Publicis Sapient.
During the event, Philippe Delpech, Sonepar President and CEO, announced a €500 million investment program to accelerate the Group’s digitalization and deploy AI at scale worldwide, representing one of the most ambitious investments in artificial intelligence in the electrical distribution sector. Through these investments, the Group aims to combine commercial performance and operational excellence in support of its customers’ energy transition.
The summit marked the next stage in Sonepar’s strategic supplier partnerships, highlighting the value we can create together as the industry evolves. Meeting the scale of electrification and leading the energy transition will require stronger collaboration across the value chain, more resilient supply chains, and more effective use of data and AI.
Future Generations Day: bringing future generations into the conversation
The week concluded by widening the perspective once again, this time towards the people who will shape the decades ahead. Sonepar’s first Future Generations Day held on October 22, brought together associates, families and shareholders to exchange perspectives on skills, leadership, inclusion and intergenerational collaboration.
Through a series of inspirational talks and roundtable discussions, Caroline Sarrot-Lecarpentier, speaker and expert in intergenerational relations, Frédérique Alexandre-Bailly, teacher at ESCP business school, and Lucie Amand, influencer, electrician, plumber, and Sonepar France customer, explored how generations can work better together. They were joined by Lola Legros, Director of Human Resources at Sonepar France, Patricia Andres Underwood, Learning Director at Sonepar, and Flora Frémond, Sustainability and Impact Program Manager at Sonepar, to discuss how we can develop tomorrow’s talent and how inclusion can help shape the future of our industry.
For a family-owned company with a long-term perspective, it was a fitting conclusion to the week that brought Sonepar’s Purpose, “Powering Progress for Future Generations,” to life.
Two events, one direction
From Sonepar’s strategic priorities to the partnerships that support its transformation, to the people who will carry that transformation forward, these events created a continuous conversation about what comes next. They brought different generations, perspectives and parts of Sonepar’s ecosystem together around a shared challenge: how do we make the choices today that will create lasting value tomorrow?
In Paris, that meant looking ahead, listening to different voices and strengthening the connections between strategy, partnerships and people's engagement.