In Casablanca, his grand-mother he was repeating a dictum, according to which the girls have two outcomes in life, the house of their husband or the grave. Two prospects ” not very sexy “, according to Ilham Kadri. Then, the girl has what her grandmother urged her : to look for another exit. “For me, this was education, which means freedom, the freedom to choose where one lives, how one lives, with whom we marry,’ said she, in 2017. At the end of this third way, today, a form of consecration : Ms. Kadri will replace Jean-Pierre Clamadieu at the head of the chemical group Solvay, an icon of capitalism belgian and one of the largest european industrial groups, according to the decision made official on Tuesday 9 October.
The venerable house of brussels was looking for months, a personality trained to succeed his boss in French, which was taken in may of the chairmanship of the board of directors of Engie – a function is non-operational, but very gripping. A search was conducted both within Solvay and outside, mainly in the world of chemistry. The appointments committee chaired by former european commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy has finally found the rare bird, in the person of Mrs. Kadri, who will arrive in Solvay on the 1st of January. A two-month transition during which she will work with Mr. Clamadieu are provided. Then, on march 1st, she will become director and chair of the executive committee.
In 2012, the board of directors of Solvay had broken a first taboo by entrusting the orders of the group to a stranger. Yet was he the boss of a company in the same industry, Rhodia, Solvay had just bought. This time, the company founded by the Solvay brothers in 1863 is even more bold, with at its head a woman, a foreigner, a French-Moroccan who has never worked in his breast. A daring and some for a group…