Paris : France's biggest insurance group AXA said Monday that its boss Henri de Castries is to stepdown, with a British newspaper saying he may take over at banking giant HSBC.
"After 27 years in the group, and close to 17 years as chief executive officer, Henri de Castries, chairman and CEO of AXA, has announced his decision to retire and to step down from the board of directors on September 1st, 2016," AXA said in a statement.
The Sunday Times, citing an unnamed source, said at the weekend that the AXA chief was favourite to succeed current HSBC chairman Douglas Flint after joining the board of the British global bank, Europe's largest, on March 1.
A spokesman for HSBC in London dismissed the report as "speculation" in an email to AFP.
Last week, Flint told HSBC shareholders that the bank had started looking for his successor who would probably be named next year "but the exact timing is clearly dependent upon identifying and securing the appropriate candidate," he said.
De Castries, 61, is from an old French artistocratic family and reportedly a descendant of the notorious Marquis de Sade.
He went to the ENA elite school for top civil servants at the same time as President Francois Hollande, Hollande's former partner and current Environment Minister Segolene Royal and Michel Sapin, who is now finance minister.
His early jobs in government included a stint at the French Treasury in the 1980s, where he was closely involved with former prime minister Edouard Balladur's privatisation programme and later became head of the Treasury's foreign exchange operations.
He is said to be close to both Hollande and former president Nicolas Sarkozy. He often speaks out on French politics, society and economics in media interviews.
AXA, second in Europe only to German giant Allianz, said its board had unanimously decided at a meeting Saturday to separate the chairman and chief executive functions.
Replacing de Castries will be Denis Duverne as non-executive chairman of the board of directors and Thomas Buberl as chief executive officer of AXA and a member of is board.
