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Our stakeholders

A company’s ability to respond to stakeholders’ expectations is a measure of its credibility and sustainability.

As a diversified global healthcare leader operating in more than 100 countries, Sanofi is well aware of the importance of providing concrete responses to the needs and expectations of a wide variety of stakeholders, particularly those in the healthcare field.

In our day-to-day interactions with stakeholders, we seek to deliver appropriate responses whenever we are called upon – for example, to provide reliable and factual information, to participate in constructive dialogue, to form partnerships, to support patient associations, to provide humanitarian assistance, to find innovative solutions for patients and to answer many other needs.

Ongoing stakeholder dialogue

In the past, we have consulted our in-house and external stakeholders on many occasions with a precise purpose in mind – such as for the materiality test.

However, starting in 2011, Sanofi’s CSR Direction decided to pursue a more pro-active strategy and establish a dedicated structure to ensure continuous, formal interaction with our external stakeholders. A stakeholder panel was created in late 2011 in France.  The first stakeholder meeting will be organized in Q1 of 2012.

This new development, one of Sanofi’s 2011 CSR milestones, is supported by leading CSR rules and guidelines (e.g., Global Reporting Initiatives, ISO 26000). Ensuring stakeholder engagement and dialogue on a regular basis will allow us to constantly gain new insights about the CSR landscape and benefit from outside expertise on the CSR challenges facing the Group.

Regular contacts with large or small investors are ensured by the Board or company employees acting on its behalf on questions of corporate governance through various channels and events such as Salon Actionaria organized in France, the establishment of a minority shareholder committee, the maintenance of an award winning Investor Relations and Individual Shareholder department, interactions with Proxy Agencies and Social Rating Agencies, and individual outreaches. *

For more information:

• Corporate Governance

We are exploring approaches to expanding our ongoing dialogue with stakeholders and expect to see exciting developments in this area in 2012.

Different stakeholder relationships correspond to different needs

Our interactions with stakeholders necessarily require differing degrees of involvement – from promoting awareness and communications, to dialogue and consultation, partnerships and collaboration. The following table outlines our primary stakeholder relationships. These stakeholder relationships are managed on a daily basis worldwide and the stakeholder process is a complementary process.

The different sections of our CSR Report provide an in-depth account of how these interactions with our many stakeholders have produced results through specific initiatives and actions.