Engie CEO Steps Down
The CEO of French energy firm Engie Isabelle Kocher will step down from her position ahead of the expiry of her tenure in May, the company said in a statement on February 25, following a board meeting. Until Engie finds a new leader, its general secretary Clare Waysand will be interim CEO, while operational management will be handled collectively by Waysand, COO Paul Almirante and CFO Judith Hartmann.
Kocher took the reigns of Engie in 2016, and her immediate priority was getting the company back into the black after it booked €4.6 ($5.04)bn in losses in 2015. It returned to profit in 2017, thanks to a €13.2bn divestment strategy launched by Kocher which also involved shifting the company away from fossil fuels and increasing its focus on power grids, renewable energy and energy services.
Some were unhappy with the direction Kocher took the company in, however, including board members representing the French state, which has a 24% share in Engie. The CEO faced criticism for selling coal and gas assets too cheaply and destroying shareholder value, according to reports in the French press.
Engie's various businesses also lack synergy, ranging from capital-intensive gas transportation, to a fast-growing clean energy business and legacy nuclear capacity in Belgium, which is looking to phase out atomic energy. As such, there have been calls to break the company up, but Kocher opposed this.
Engie's board took a decision not to renew Kocher's contract in a meeting on February 6, following months of board infighting. The company said at the time that "further development of the group's strategy required a new leadership." Chairman Jean-Pierre Clamadieu later told France’s Les Echoes newspaper that Kocher “did not manage to demonstrate that she was the right person to deepen the group’s transformation.”
In a company statement, Kocher pointed to her achievements in improving Engie's green credentials. "By going back to sustainable growth, Engie is not only healthy from an economic point of view, but Engie is also a landmark for a more modern, a more committed corporate model," she said. "I am deeply convinced that only a strong action to fight global warming and more generally to combat a model that massively over-consumes natural resources and lets inequalities develop, can respond to the concerns of future generations, who are calling for change."