Total SA (FP) appointed Patrick Pouyanne as chief executive officer, succeeding Christophe de Margerie who was killed in a plane crash earlier this week.
Pouyanne, 51, the company’s refining chief and long-touted as a potential successor, was named CEO at a board meeting in Paris today, the company said in a statement. Thierry Desmarest returns for a second stint as chairman until the end of 2015.
The new CE0 will have to see through a round of cost cuts as lower oil prices and weak returns from refining eat into profit at France’s largest company by sales. De Margerie, killed Oct. 20 when his private jet struck a snowplow on a Moscow runway, had sold older fields and sought to pare investments in new projects as part of a pledge to investors last month to cut $2 billion in costs a year.
“He’s a good choice because the most problematic area of the company is in refining and chemicals, which he knows well,” Francois Pelegrina, a representative of the CFDT union, said by telephone, referring to Pouyanne’s appointment.
The company will split the role of chairman and CEO, which de Margerie had combined, until the end of 2015, when Desmarest, 68, reaches the mandatory retirement age. Desmarest, who had served as CEO until de Margerie took charge in 2007, remained chairman until 2010.
