Jean-Dominique Senard, at the Elysée on December 12th. Photo Ludovic Marin. AFP
The former boss of Michelin will take the lead of the French car manufacturer this Thursday in doublet with Thierry Bolloré, already in place. A profile much less bling-bling than that of the fallen boss and still held in Japan.
The retirement will wait for Jean-Dominique Senard. At almost 66 years old, the current boss of Michelin, who was to hand over in May, will resume service. The Renault Board of Directors will meet this Thursday morning at 10 am to end the departure of Carlos Ghosn, imprisoned since November 19 in Japan for suspicion of financial malpractice, and appoint a new tandem leader formed by Jean-Dominique Senard, so, but also Thierry Bolloré, current deputy Ghosn. The first will be the new non-executive president of Renault, where he will head the board of directors. The second should be appointed Executive Director General of the automaker, after taking orders “temporarily” to deal with the vacancy of power.
Like Carlos Ghosn, who spent a good part of his career at Michelin before being recruited at the car manufacturer in 1996, Jean-Dominique Senard will end his career by switching from tire to car. One of the few common points of these two men who, apart from being both captains of industry with solid international experience, display a style and temperaments different, not to say opposed.
“Social design of the company”
The name of this financier training course without a hitch since his exit from HEC – spent by Total, Saint-Gobain and Pechiney before landing at Michelin in 2005 as CFO – came back insistently in recent days. An ideal profile and much appreciated political power for several years, left and right together, to forget Ghosn and his immoderate love of money and luxury. “It’s a big industrialist, a man who has a social concept of the company and has demonstrated it several times,” said a few days ago the Minister of Economy, Bruno Mayor.
In other words, a pedigree poles antipodes the Lebanese-Brazilian-French manager who held a hand of iron the French-Japanese car alliance: Ghosn can be as cold and without tweezers with his interlocutors that Jean-Dominique Senard is considerate and full of delicacy. “He has this very old and extremely courteous side of France that makes his charm and class with the big bosses,” says a young start-up who met him at one of the many conferences where “JDS”, as one Called him at Michelin, came to discuss his vision of the humanist enterprise in a capitalism he would like “appeased”. But that does not mean that he has his tongue in his pocket. He’s empathetic, but he’s not a blessing-yes-yes. “
Catholic fervent
For a long time in the shadows, this son of a former ambassador, always dressed to the nines of the pontifical nobility, rubbed shoulders with Christophe de Margerie in the very select private boarding school Sainte-Croix-des-Neiges of Abondance (Haute- Savoie). Châtelain in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where his family settled since the 17th century has a vineyard around his castle of Lagoy, this timid of appearance had his baptism of fire at Pechiney in the early 2000s. Appointed CEO in 2003, he left the company after having to do the dirty work: restructuring the French aluminum specialist after its merger with the Canadian Alcan. Edouard Michelin managed to convince him to join his company. In Clermont-Ferrand, Senard will become the first manager not from the founding family of this multinational in 177 countries. The result of an unfortunate combination of circumstances: in 2006, one year after the arrival of Senard, the same Edouard Michelin dies at the age of 42 because of an accidental drowning off the island of Sein during a fishing party.
If the unions Michelin rather positively his action (with the exception of the CGT), JDS, which has opened this French industrial institution to a culture of services and worked to its digital transformation, however did not loathe when had to make painful decisions. As in the announcement of the removal of thousands of jobs, including in France at its Joué-lès-Tours plant, in the name of competitiveness and cost reduction. “At the same time, this lover of the industry never fails to rebel when it leaves the fatalistic couplet of the French deindustrialization”, as one observer says. And indeed, he has never stopped investing in France, where he wants to let it know that he pays all of his taxes. In recent years, his remuneration (3.8 million euros for 2017, an increase of 15% in one year) has tended to grow in line with the rise in Michelin’s profits. But this fervent Catholic insisted that it be “moderate” compared to what he could have obtained.
View height
As anti-bling-bling as his employer, the one that regularly sees his lengths in the municipal pool of Clermont-Ferrand will have long waited before exposing himself in the public arena and assume a more political role. He became vice-president of the Institut Montaigne in 2017 and a member of the Century. He wrote with the former head of the CFDT Nicole Notat, in anticipation of the Pact Act, a report (“The company, object of interest collective “) on the company and the general interest at the request of the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud. A bespoke role that has allowed him to promote his vision of a business that is not only profit-driven but also incorporates new social and environmental concerns.
In business circles, it is estimated that his height of view and his consensual image would have made an excellent successor to Pierre Gattaz at the head of the Medef. A mission to which this passionate geopolitical, arch-favorite, was preparing discreetly. Until being forced to give up in December 2017: the executive council of the movement has indeed refused to change the maximum age limit – 64 years – to run for the presidency.
JDS never said a word of this episode, but we imagine that for this hyperactive father of three children, vice president of the Meeting of the Papal Nobility (RNP), the prospect of no longer having to run the world and the Appointment could cause some disappointments. At the head of Renault’s supervisory board, where he will have to pacify relations with the public shareholder (the state still holds 15% of the shares) and above all save the alliance with Mitsubishi and Nissan by defending French interests as much as possible, JDS will be able to invest deeply in this art that is corporate governance. This art is all the more delicate when it concerns two countries with well-defined cultures. A new challenge for Jean-Dominique Senard, who is expected to become the new sage of Renault responsible for healing wounds after the trauma of the fall of Emperor Ghosn.