That’s all him. Tuesday, October 18, after three weeks of blocking refineries and fuel depots, Patrick Pouyanné was ” tiredness “. Tired of hearing it repeated over and over again that he “had increased by 52% in 2021”. So, the CEO of TotalEnergies “swung” a tweet. Like that, all alone in his corner. This increase in 2021, he justified, was aimed at bringing his remuneration back to its normal level of some 6 million euros annually, because he had “voluntarily” reduced in 2020, the year of Covid-19.
The boss thought to restore a mathematical truth. He got himself pilloried. Mocked by the elected representatives of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) in unison, labeled « hour-sun » by Laurent Berger, the boss of the CFDT. Even the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, who applied himself during the conflict to scolding the strikers and the management of TotalEnergies on an equal footing, called on the bosses to show “elementary decency”.
“France is a strange society in which I should be ashamed and apologize for what I earn” – Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies
Faced with this general indignation, many would elude, would evoke a moment of bewilderment. Not Patrick Pouyanne. “I’m not above ground, it’s just that I can’t stand bad faith. That’s why I chose business over politics.”declares to Monde the industrialist who was adviser to Edouard Balladur at Matignon (1993-1995) and director of cabinet to François Fillon at the Ministry of Information Technologies (1995-1997), before joining Elf Aquitaine twenty- five years. And to add greedily in the provocation: “At least, we are no longer talking about the 52%, the debate has moved to the amount in absolute value of my remuneration. I assume. France is a strange society in which I should be ashamed and apologize for what I earn. »
“Dialogue of the Deaf”
At 59, the man who has been running the world’s fourth major since 2014 has become a divisive public figure. Even before the blow of the pump, it was involved, this year, in all the shocks of society, from the invasion of Ukraine to the energy crisis, from the taxation of superprofits to the climate emergency.
At the time of the “Guignols de l’info”, this polytechnician cut like a second line of rugby would have had his puppet, like the famous “J6M”, for “Jean-Marie Messier myself master of the world”, the former boss from Vivendi. No doubt, the CEO of TotalEnergies would have been crunched by the cult Canal+ show, a colossus straight out of Tintin in the land of black gold, like a keffiyeh and jerrycan, renamed “6P” (“Patrick Pouyanné oil polluter profits Poutine”). Instead, he inherited a hashtag, where we compare the ratio “contribution to society to remuneration” of a business leader and a footballer.
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