Biography|Patrick Pouyanné — The Coupole Board That Named Him Chief After Vnukovo

People treat the Total succession as a planned handover on a quiet Wednesday.

It was not.

Christophe de Margerie, chairman and chief executive, died in a plane crash at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport in the night of 20 to 21 October 2014.

L'Express later reconstructed the hours that followed: Pouyanné, then president of Refining and Chemicals, was called to the headquarters and stayed into the early morning.

On 22 October 2014 the board met at the company's La Défense seat and named him chief executive and chairman of the executive committee.

Thierry Desmarest, a former chief, came back as non-executive chairman for a transitional year.

Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and Total's own later biography all date the appointment to that Wednesday.

The building then was Tour Coupole, also called Tour Total, at 2 place Jean Millier in Courbevoie.

It had opened in 1985 as Tour Elf.

After Total absorbed Elf it kept the tower as a headquarters.

The pin is that public tower, not a private office inside it.

Pouyanné was fifty-one.

He had been on the executive committee only since January 2012.

On 29 May 2015 the annual meeting elected him a director.

On 16 December 2015 the board added the chairmanship and he became président-directeur général.

The company later restyled itself TotalEnergies.

A newer tower, The Link, was planned as a later seat.

The 2014 decision belongs here, at the Coupole slab, because that is where the board sat when the vacancy had to be filled in two days.

No private words from that meeting are quoted.

The public fact is the appointment itself.

Photo: Jérémy Barande / École polytechnique, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (portrait, 2017). The cover is the person, not a tight shot of the copyrighted tower.