Already a major creative property investor, its acquisition of COGEDIM in 2007 helped the ALTAREA Group become one of the foremost property developers in Europe. Selecting Visual Scope for its subsidiary governance requirements is an integral part of its sustained external development strategy in France and in Europe. 

A single solution to centralise company data

"Until now, individual company legal information was dispersed between companies," explains Florence Lemaire, the Group's Deputy Corporate Legal Director, "and collating this data used a lot of team time and effort. The integration of COGEDIM into the ALTAREA group made us realise that we needed a tool to centralise all this data in a single, efficient data repository."

After meeting with several different suppliers, ALTAREA selected EQUITY's solution for its rich functionalities. The legal teams were pleased with the increased efficiency and the time savings offered by Visual Scope in daily corporate management activities: graphic representations of group structure (organisational structures, custom reports), operational and historical views, simplified document printing (company descriptions, statutes, mandates, matriculation records, etc.).

Application integrated into Group tools

"We needed to be sure that the Visual Scope application could dialogue with the internal financial consolidation software (Magnitude) and the accounting application (SAGE)," adds Florence Lemaire, "and Visual Scope does this very simply through a Web services connection."

The intention is to deploy the solution rapidly throughout the Group's companies. Since last year's acquisition of COGEDIM, ALTAREA now owns almost a thousand individual companies in France, Italy and Spain.

About ALTAREA

Established in 1994, ALTAREA is a global developer in the property market and a European property investment company specialised in shopping centres. As a global property developer, ALTAREA is skilled both in operational design and development, and systematically seeks out product innovations to anticipate the needs of tomorrow's society. The group is active in all property investment and development areas: retail space, offices, hotels and residential. As a specialised property investor, ALTAREA has built a portfolio of shopping centres, which represents the most profitable long-term asset of its holdings and provides regular cash-flow and growth for the group. ALTAREA conserves the commercial part of its developments in its property portfolio. As of 30 June 2008, ALTAREA's assets included 45 shopping centres with a global asset value of €2.2 Billion. ALTAREA operates in France, Italy and Spain, and is listed on the Euronext Paris Eurolist market.

About EQUITY

A software solutions provider for over 10 years, EQUITY provides holding and subsidiary governance solutions. Visual Scope is EQUITY's leading product, enabling executive officers and legal, accounting and finance directors to centralise information and manage their group structure more effectively. This tool provides a reliable and efficient solution to new regulatory filing requirements. Over half the companies making up the CAC 40 index have already chosen Visual Scope: Accor, BNP Paribas, GDF Suez, Pernod Ricard, Renault, Société Générale, Suez Environnement, Vivendi, to name but a few.