Schneider Electric boss announces shock exit after two decades in charge

Schneider Electric boss Jean-Pascal Tricoire announced his shock exit yesterday after two decades in charge – and just months after buying British software giant Aveva.

He will be replaced at the French conglomerate in May by Peter Herweck, formerly head of the business’s industrial automation and now Aveva chief executive.

Tricoire leaves on a high as Schneider reported an 18 per cent rise in 2022 revenues to a record £30billion, slightly above analyst expectations. 

Income was up 9 per cent at £3.1billion when taking into account one-off charges from its Russian exit last year, when it sold the operations to local management.

Schneider is now one of the 10 most valuable companies in France’s blue-chip CAC 40 index, behind luxury goods players such as LVMH and aerospace company Airbus.

The Frenchman– who will stay on as Schneider’s chairman until 2025 – completed the long-running takeover of Cambridge-based Aveva in December. 

The £10.6billion deal was initially contested by some investors and this newspaper.

Schneider had last September agreed to buy the remaining stake at £31 a share, a 40 per cent premium to the price Aveva was trading at before the interest became known.

It then further sweetened the price to £32.25, a 47 per cent premium, to allay investor unrest.

There were serious concerns over Schneider’s links to China and worries that Aveva’s technology, which provides software to help engineers design major industrial projects and products to help run factories, could be compromised.

But the deal was given the green light under the National Security and Investment Act.

Although Tricoire, 59, is little known in the UK, he is a prominent figure in France, masterminding Schneider’s transformation from a traditional electrical products seller to a supplier of digital systems and solutions. 

The £77billion company makes everything from circuit breakers that help customers manage their energy consumption to electric vehicle chargers. 

Schneider, founded in 1836, was regarded as a sleepy French behemoth, mostly focused on selling electronics.

Under Tricoire, who became group chief executive in 2006, the company turned itself into a China-focused digital systems powerhouse, with the company’s Asia Pacific division accounting for more than a quarter of its revenues. 

But he has raised some eyebrows over his ties to Chinese businessmen and the cultural elite.

As reported by the Mail on Sunday, he has never condemned Chinese human rights abuses or challenged its draconian zero-Covid strategy.

Despite his protestations that he is apolitical, Tricoire cites his leadership hero as Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader who oversaw the brutal suppression of peaceful protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tricoire said recently: ‘Many people are inspiring. If I focus on the countries I lived in, one of the political leaders I was impressed by is Deng Xiaoping.

‘He enabled profound change in the country. He was innovative in his approach.

‘He was ostracised by the mainstream. He forgave those who mistreated him, and included all camps in the reconciliation.’

Megan Prangley, of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, told the Mail on Sunday: ‘Tricoire’s ties to Chinese Communist Party officials, including high-ranking premier Li Keqiang, should not have been overlooked. The Government should have more closely considered Tricoire’s personal connections and track record.’

Tricoire – who relocated to Hong Kong in 2011 in an unusual move for senior staff of a French company, part of a broader shift by the firm to scatter top executives globally – said he had no qualms about the Chinese push he had spearheaded over the years.

The Schneider chief said: ‘My vision of the world is that it will remain a very globalised and interdependent one.’

His formal roles have included leading the French/China Association, sitting on the Global CEO Council of China’s Premier Li Keqiang and on the Advisory Board of the Mayors of Beijing and Shanghai.