Patrick Pouyanne

Patrick Pouyanné
Born	1963-06-24June 24, 1963 (age 63)
Nationality	French
Education	École Polytechnique, Corps des Mines
Occupation	Business executive, engineer
Company	TotalEnergies SE
Title	Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies

Patrick Jean Pouyanné (born 24 June 1963) is a French businessman and engineer who is chairman and chief executive officer of TotalEnergies SE, the French multinational energy and petroleum company. He became chief executive officer of the company, then named Total S.A., on 22 October 2014, succeeding Christophe de Margerie, who was killed in a plane crash in Moscow. He was appointed chairman of the board of directors on 16 December 2015, combining the chairman and chief executive roles that had briefly been separated after de Margerie's death.

Before joining the oil industry, Pouyanné spent seven years in the French public sector, including as technical adviser to Prime Minister Édouard Balladur on environment and industry policy and as chief of staff to François Fillon, the minister for information technology and post. He joined the petroleum company Elf Aquitaine in January 1997 and moved through a series of finance, strategy and operating roles at Total after its absorption of Elf in 2000, becoming president of the group's refining and chemicals division in January 2012.

As chief executive, Pouyanné has overseen the group's renaming from Total to TotalEnergies in 2021, its response to the war in Ukraine, including the writedown of its Russian gas interests, and a series of legal disputes in France concerning the company's climate disclosures, its advertising and its projects in Uganda and Mozambique. In September 2026 the TotalEnergies board of directors reaffirmed his leadership and proposed the renewal of his mandate at the shareholders' meeting scheduled for May 2027.

Pouyanné also sits on the board of directors of Capgemini SE, where he serves as vice chairman and lead independent director. He was made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur in April 2015 and has since been promoted to Officer.

Early life and education

Pouyanné is a graduate of the École Polytechnique, the French engineering grande école, and became a Chief Engineer of the Corps des Mines, the corps of French state engineers recruited from among the school's top graduates.

Career

Public service, 1989 to 1996

Between 1989 and 1996, Pouyanné held a series of administrative posts in the French Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of the Environment. From 1993 to 1995 he served as technical adviser to Prime Minister Édouard Balladur on environment and industry policy, and from 1995 to 1996 he was chief of staff to François Fillon, then the minister for information technology and post.

Elf Aquitaine and Total, 1997 to 2014

Pouyanné joined the petroleum company Elf Aquitaine's exploration and production division in January 1997, first as chief administrative officer in Angola, then as the company's representative in Qatar, becoming president of its Qatari exploration and production subsidiary in 1999. Total absorbed Elf Aquitaine in 2000, and Pouyanné remained with the combined group. He was appointed president for finance, economy and information technology in the exploration and production division in August 2002, and senior vice president for strategy, business development and research and development in the same division in January 2006, joining Total's management committee that May. In March 2011 he became deputy general manager for chemicals and deputy general manager for petrochemicals, and in January 2012 he was appointed president of refining and chemicals and joined the group's executive committee.

Chief executive officer, 2014

Christophe de Margerie, Total's chairman and chief executive, was killed on 20 October 2014 when his private jet collided with a snow-clearing vehicle on takeoff from Vnukovo Airport in Moscow. Two days later, on 22 October 2014, Total's board of directors named Pouyanné, then 51 and head of the refining and chemicals division, as chief executive officer. Thierry Desmarest, a former chairman and chief executive who had continued as honorary chairman, was recalled to serve as chairman on an interim basis while the two roles remained divided. Contemporary press coverage described Pouyanné as a long-touted internal candidate taking charge of the company as it faced falling oil prices and uncertainty over its large investments in Russia.

Chairman and chief executive officer, 2015 to present

Pouyanné was elected to Total's board of directors at the shareholders' meeting of 29 May 2015. On 16 December 2015 the board appointed him chairman, recombining the chairman and chief executive roles a year after they had been split following de Margerie's death. Desmarest stepped down as chairman at the same meeting because he was approaching the company's mandatory retirement age for the post; the board separately created the position of lead independent director and appointed the director Patricia Barbizet to it. Pouyanné's directorship, and with it his term as chairman and chief executive, was subsequently renewed by shareholders on 1 June 2018, 28 May 2021 and 24 May 2024, the last renewal running until 2027.

In September 2026 the company's board of directors reaffirmed Pouyanné's leadership and the group's strategy of combining oil and gas with what it calls integrated power, and said it would propose the renewal of his mandate at the shareholders' meeting to be held in May 2027. The board's statement followed an amendment to the company's statutory age limits for the chairman and chief executive role, which shareholders had approved by close to 98 percent at the annual meeting on 29 May 2026. Jacques Aschenbroich, the group's lead independent director, was proposed for renewal in that role at the same time.

Leadership and management style

During the 2020 collapse in oil prices, Pouyanné pursued a different course from some rival chief executives: while Royal Dutch Shell cut its dividend for the first time since the Second World War and BP announced 10,000 job cuts, Total under Pouyanné suspended dividend growth and share buybacks rather than cutting its payout outright, and cut about $7.5 billion in annual costs through spending reductions and voluntary job cuts to keep paying a dividend even with oil trading around $40 a barrel. An analyst quoted at the time said Total had "probably the best balance sheet among the majors" and credited management's "ability... to adjust quickly to the crisis."

Pouyanné has held the combined roles of chairman and chief executive for almost the whole of his tenure, a structure some corporate governance advocates regard as reducing board independence. TotalEnergies has offset this by maintaining a lead independent director, a role created when Pouyanné took the chairmanship in December 2015 and currently held by Jacques Aschenbroich.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Pouyanné's management set out public principles for handling the group's Russian business: comply with European Union sanctions regardless of the effect on the company's Russian assets, provide no further capital for Russian projects, avoid steps that would unintentionally transfer value to sanctioned Russian interests, help secure Europe's energy supply within the limits set by European governments, and stop buying Russian oil and petroleum products entirely by the end of 2022. Pouyanné's company said on 1 March 2022 that it condemned the invasion, and confirmed that it would stop trading Russian oil and oil products on spot markets from 25 February 2022.

Major deals and strategic decisions

Pouyanné changed the company's name from Total to TotalEnergies in May 2021 to reflect its expansion into renewable and low-carbon power generation alongside its oil and gas business.

Pouyanné's most consequential strategic decisions followed Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His company then held a 19.4 percent stake in the Russian gas producer Novatek, a 20 percent stake in the Yamal LNG project, a 10 percent stake in the Arctic LNG 2 project, a 49 percent stake in the Terneftegaz gas venture, and a 20 percent interest in the Kharyaga oil joint venture. Rather than exit these holdings immediately, as some rival oil majors did with their Russian assets, Pouyanné's management said an abrupt withdrawal risked transferring value to sanctioned Russian interests, and instead wound the positions down over the following months. The company sold its Kharyaga interest to the Russian state company Zarubezhneft in August 2022 and its Terneftegaz stake to Novatek in September 2022. Under Pouyanné, the group recorded impairment charges of $4.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022 tied largely to Arctic LNG 2, a further $3.5 billion in the second quarter tied to the Novatek stake, and another $3.1 billion in the third quarter for the same reason. In December 2022, after concluding that European Union sanctions barred its board representatives from voting on financial matters at Novatek and so prevented them from properly carrying out their duties, Pouyanné's board withdrew its directors from Novatek's board; the company then stopped equity accounting for the stake and, in February 2023, recorded a fourth impairment of $4.1 billion related to the deconsolidation. Total Russia related writedowns recorded under Pouyanné across 2022 and early 2023 exceeded $14 billion.

Pouyanné also continued to expand the company outside Russia during this period. In the year to December 2025 it completed the purchase of a 50 percent stake in the SapuraOMV joint venture in Malaysia, interests in 12 further offshore Malaysian blocks, the acquisition of VSB, an additional 10 percent stake in the Moho oil field in the Republic of the Congo, and renewable energy projects in Canada, the Dominican Republic and Uganda worth about $500 million, while divesting $3.6 billion of assets including its non-operated interest in Nigeria's Bonga field, part of its stake in Malaysia's Block SK408, half of renewable energy portfolios in the United States and Greece, and a 1.7 percent stake in the Indian renewable developer Adani Green Energy.

The company declared force majeure on two projects during Pouyanné's tenure because of deteriorating security conditions. It halted commercial production at the Yemen LNG plant, in which it holds a 39.62 percent stake, in 2015 after fighting worsened near the Balhaf export terminal, and the plant remains in preservation mode. In April 2021 Pouyanné's management withdrew personnel from the Afungi site in Mozambique because of an escalating insurgency in Cabo Delgado province and declared force majeure on the Mozambique LNG project it operates; the force majeure was lifted at the end of 2025, opening the way for the project to resume.

Financial and market performance

Under Pouyanné, the company reported sales of $201.2 billion in 2025, down from $214.6 billion in 2024 and $237.1 billion in 2023. Net income attributable to shareholders was $13.1 billion in 2025, a decrease of 17 percent from $15.8 billion in 2024, which was itself down from $21.4 billion in 2023. Adjusted EBITDA fell from $50.0 billion in 2023 to $43.1 billion in 2024 and $40.6 billion in 2025.

Pouyanné's board proposed an ordinary dividend of €3.40 per share for fiscal year 2025, up 5.6 percent from 2024, alongside $7.5 billion in share buybacks during 2025, equivalent to a 55 percent payout ratio, and guided to a further $3 billion to $6 billion of buybacks in 2026 depending on the oil price. In April 2025, the company's shares had an average reference price of €53.02 over the 20 trading sessions used to set that year's employee share subscription offer, before a 20 percent discount was applied to fix the €42.50 subscription price. Its shares trade on Euronext Paris and the New York Stock Exchange, and are also listed on Euronext Brussels and the London Stock Exchange through CREST depositary interests; the company ended its American depositary share programme and converted its ADSs into ordinary NYSE-listed shares on 8 December 2025.

The group's workforce declined slightly in recent years, from 102,579 employees at the end of 2023 to 102,887 at the end of 2024 and 101,513 at the end of 2025.

Board memberships and outside roles

Beyond TotalEnergies, Pouyanné has been a member of the board of directors of Capgemini SE since May 2017; Capgemini's own board listing describes him as lead independent director, and TotalEnergies' biography of him describes him as vice chairman of the Capgemini board, lead independent director and chairman of its ethics and governance committee since May 2026. He has also served on the board of the École Polytechnique since September 2018, on the board of the Institut du Monde Arabe since 2017, and on the foundation La France s'engage since 2017. He is vice chairman of the French business association Entreprises pour l'Environnement, having chaired it between June 2022 and June 2025, and vice chairman of the Alliance pour l'Éducation, part of the United Way network, having chaired it from June 2018 to January 2025.

In January 2018 Pouyanné was among a group of chief executives who attended a dinner hosted by then United States President Donald Trump for European business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In December 2022 he was a guest at the state dinner hosted by President Joe Biden at the White House in honour of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Controversies

Climate related litigation

In January 2020 several French associations and local authorities sued Pouyanné's company before the Nanterre Civil Court, seeking to compel it to strengthen its vigilance plan under France's 2017 duty of vigilance law by setting out in detail the risks of global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius and by committing to cease exploring for new oil and gas fields, cut oil and gas production by 2030 and 2050, and cut net emissions by 40 percent by 2040 against a 2019 baseline. The Paris Civil Court of Justice, to which the case was transferred, ruled the action inadmissible on 6 July 2023. The claimants appealed, and the Paris Court of Appeal ruled on 18 June 2024 that the action was admissible on the basis of the duty of vigilance law, transferred the case for trial on the merits, struck 17 of the 22 original claimants from the case, and declined to order interim measures; the company maintains that it has met its obligations under the law. A related action, based on similar demands, began in March 2024 before the commercial court of Tournai in Belgium.

A separate duty of vigilance case, brought by Friends of the Earth France, Survie and four Ugandan organisations, AFIEGO, CRED, NAPE and NAVODA, accused Pouyanné's company of failing to protect the rights of more than 100,000 people whose land was taken for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project in Uganda and Tanzania. A French court dismissed that case on procedural grounds on 28 February 2023, ruling it inadmissible because documents the claimants filed in December 2022 differed substantially from the formal notice they had sent the company in 2019; the claimants disputed that characterisation and retained the right to appeal.

Separately, nine shareholders brought an action before the Nanterre Commercial Court in July 2023 seeking to annul a resolution of the May 2023 annual shareholders' meeting that had recorded the company's 2022 results and set that year's dividend, arguing Pouyanné's management had understated in its 2022 accounts the future costs linked to greenhouse gas emissions from customers' use of its products. The Nanterre court dismissed the claim on 25 September 2025 for lack of standing at a preliminary procedural stage, and the claimants have appealed. The company and several of its American subsidiaries have also been named, along with many other companies, in a number of United States climate liability lawsuits seeking compensation for the costs of adapting to climate change; it disputes that the relevant courts have jurisdiction and denies liability.

Advertising and greenwashing ruling

French associations brought civil and criminal actions alleging that, since the company's rebranding to TotalEnergies in May 2021, its corporate communications and advertising made false or misleading environmental claims. On 23 October 2025 the Paris Judicial Court ruled that the company's institutional communications were informational rather than commercial in nature and so fell outside the scope of consumer protection law, and dismissed the claims relating to the 2021 rebranding campaign and to the company's public statements on the role of natural gas and biofuels in the energy transition; no advertising by its French subsidiaries was found to have broken the law. The court did order the removal of three paragraphs concerning carbon neutrality ambitions from the website of its retail subsidiary TotalEnergies Électricité et Gaz France, and neither side appealed the ruling.

Mozambique

In March 2021 armed groups attacked the town of Palma, near the liquefied natural gas project that Pouyanné's company operates in Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique. The company withdrew its project personnel from the nearby Afungi site on 26 April 2021 in response to the deteriorating security situation and declared force majeure as operator of the project. In October 2023 victims and relatives of people killed in the Palma attack filed a complaint against TotalEnergies with the prosecutor in Nanterre, France, alleging involuntary manslaughter and failure to assist people in danger; the company has said it considers the allegations unfounded in both law and fact.

Recognition

Pouyanné was made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur by decree of 3 April 2015, published in the Journal officiel on 5 April 2015, in recognition of 28 years of service at the time. He has since been promoted to Officer of the Légion d'honneur.

See also

• TotalEnergies
• Christophe de Margerie
• Thierry Desmarest
• Capgemini

External links

• Official biography, TotalEnergies
• Capgemini board of directors