PARIS — Thales has appointed Henri Proglio as chairman and Patrice Caine as chief executive, with the appointments to be confirmed at a shareholders meeting in February, the defense electronics company said Tuesday.
A board meeting had been scheduled for Monday but that was postponed to allow the government and Dassault Aviation, two key shareholders, to agree on the redistribution of board seats along with the appointments.
"At the meeting of the board of directors on 23 December 2014, Patrice Caine and Henri Proglio were co-opted as directors, following the resignations of Philippe Logak, who had served as acting chairman and chief executive officer since the departure of Jean- Bernard Levy, and Steve Gentili as independent director," the company said in a statement.
A shareholders' meeting is due to be held Feb. 4, to approve the appointments.
In a surprise move, Levy left Thales last month to become chairman at state-owned utility Electricité de France.
Gentili, chairman of the BRED retail bank, holds one of the four independent posts on the board, and his departure allows Proglio to sit on the board.
Proglio was previously chairman and CEO of EDF but he was forced out due to a lack of support from the government, media reports said. Proglio, however, enjoyed close relations with the Dassault family, which backed him for the chairman's post at Thales.
Proglio's gaining a seat on the Thales board is seen as boosting the Dassault representation as the aircraft maker already directly holds four posts, and Proglio's taking up a post now means control of five votes on the board, business website La Tribune reported.
The government holds five posts on the Thales board, including one held by defense procurement chief Laurent Collet-Billon, head of the Direction Générale de l'Armement.
One of Caine's tasks will be to change the company rules to extend the retirement age beyond 65, to allow Proglio to take up the chairman's post as he is already 65, weekly Marianne reported.
Dassault holds 25.3 percent of Thales. The government holds 26.39 percent of the electronics company.
A previous Thales chairman and chief executive, Luc Vigneron, has recently been appointed CEO of the Emirates Defence Industries Company (Edic), set up by the United Arab Emirates in a bid to reorganize the defense sector in the Gulf nation.
And Vigneron's predecessor, Denis Ranque, is now non-executive chairman at Airbus, the archrival in commercial aviation to Boeing.
