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Sebastien Bazin

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Sébastien Bazin
BornNovember 9, 1961 (age 64)
NationalityFrench
EducationLycée Saint-Jean-de-Passy; Sorbonne University, Paris
OccupationBusinessman
CompanyAccor
TitleChairman and Chief Executive Officer of Accor
SpouseJuliette Bazin
Children4

Sébastien Bazin (born 9 November 1961) is a French businessman who has served as chairman and chief executive officer of Accor, the Paris-based hotel group, since 27 August 2013.[1][2] Bazin spent sixteen years at the private investment firm Colony Capital before taking the top job, and he has combined the roles of chairman and chief executive since his appointment, a structure the board has repeatedly confirmed.[3] Bazin was reappointed for a further three-year term by shareholders in May 2025, and in May 2026 he told the annual meeting that the new term would be his last, with his departure expected by May 2028 unless the board finds a successor sooner.[4]

Bazin joined the Accor board in 2005 as a representative of Colony Capital, then a major shareholder of the group, and he led Colony's European hospitality investments for fifteen years, including the acquisitions of the Fairmont and Raffles luxury hotel brands.[5] Through Colony Capital he also became a shareholder, from 2006, and later chairman, from 2009, of the football club Paris Saint-Germain.[5] Since taking charge, Bazin has pursued an "asset-light" strategy, selling the great majority of his company's owned hotel real estate to concentrate on management and franchise contracts, while expanding its brand portfolio from roughly a dozen hotel brands to more than forty through acquisitions such as FRHI Hotels & Resorts, Mantra Group and sbe Entertainment, and the Ennismore and Orient Express ventures.[6]

By the end of 2025, under his leadership, Accor reported revenue of €5.6 billion, more than 380,000 employees working under its brands in 110 countries, and a market capitalisation of €11.3 billion.[7] His tenure has also drawn criticism, including over an unsuccessful bid to acquire a stake in Air France-KLM, a write-down on lifestyle-concierge acquisitions, and, in 2026, a shareholder vote in which his compensation policy was approved by only 74.23 per cent of votes cast, down sharply from the prior year.[8][9]

Early life and education

Bazin was born on 9 November 1961.[2] By his own account he grew up in Paris, was educated at the Lycée Saint-Jean-de-Passy, and was "an idler at school", attributing his later career to "a combination of luck, confidence and blue eyes".[8] During his national service he served a year as a fireman in Paris.[8]

He holds a master's degree in business management from the Sorbonne in Paris, according to Accor's corporate biography; The Sunday Times likewise lists his university as the Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris.[5][8] His first job, before he entered finance, was as a night porter at the Hôtel Lenox in Paris.[8]

Career

Finance in New York, San Francisco and London, 1985 to 1990

Bazin began his career in finance in the United States, working in New York and San Francisco before moving to London, including a spell as a trader with the property brokerage PaineWebber.[8]

Hottinguer Rivaud Finances and L'Immobilière Hôtelière, 1990 to 1997

In 1990 Bazin returned to France and was appointed to run the investment bank Hottinguer Rivaud Finances, a post Accor's official biography describes as chief executive officer and which The Sunday Times later described as deputy director.[5][8] In 1992 he moved to L'Immobilière Hôtelière, a French hotel developer, where he served as chief executive for five years.[5]

Colony Capital, 1997 to 2013

In 1997 Bazin joined Colony Capital, the Los Angeles-founded private real-estate investment firm, at the request of its chairman, Tom Barrack, who asked him to set up and run the firm's European operations from Paris.[10] Over fifteen years at Colony, he led acquisitions concentrated in the hospitality sector, including the hotel assets of Générale des Eaux, Club Méditerranée and Lucien Barrière, the luxury hotel operator FRHI (Fairmont and Raffles), the restaurant chain Buffalo Grill, the Château Lascombes vineyard in Bordeaux, and the sports-infrastructure consultancy Stadia Consulting.[5][10] He also became a director of several listed companies in which Colony held stakes, among them Accor, Carrefour, Edenred and the Spanish retailer Dia.[10]

Bazin joined Accor's supervisory board on 3 May 2005 and became a director of the unified board on 9 January 2006, representing Colony Capital, which together with Eurazéo controlled roughly a fifth of the group's capital at the time and had pushed out several of Bazin's predecessors as chief executive.[2][1] As a director he pushed Accor to spin off its Ticket Restaurant vouchers business, which became the separately listed company Edenred, and to begin selling the real estate under its hotels, and he also sat on Edenred's own board as a Colony Capital representative.[10]

Also through Colony Capital, Bazin became a shareholder in the football club Paris Saint-Germain in 2006 and its chairman in 2009.[5]

Appointment as chairman and chief executive of Accor, 2013

On 27 August 2013, Accor's board appointed Bazin chairman and chief executive, ending a run of boardroom instability in which three successive chief executives, Jean-Marc Espalioux, Gilles Pélisson and Denis Hennequin, had each left amid friction with the Colony Capital and Eurazéo shareholder blocs.[11][1] That instability dated back to 2009, when five Accor board members and the board's then-chairman, Serge Weinberg, resigned in a dispute with Colony Capital and Eurazéo, which together held about 21 per cent of Accor's capital and four of its ten board seats at the time.[1] Bazin resigned all of his positions at Colony Capital to take the role, and Philippe Citerne, who had been serving as interim chairman since April that year, moved to vice-chairman.[1] Announcing the move, Citerne said Bazin's "perfect understanding of the Group, his experience in the hotel sector and his strong international culture" made him well placed to lead the company's transformation.[1]

At his first public presentation as chief executive, on 29 November 2013, Bazin told analysts and journalists he had spent his first ninety days meeting more than a thousand Accor employees, franchisees and investors to shape his strategy.[10] He repudiated the group's previous "40/40/20" model, under which Accor aimed to hold 40 per cent of its hotels under management contracts, 40 per cent under franchise and 20 per cent in direct ownership, and criticised the prior leadership for announcing in advance how many hotels it intended to sell, which he said had made the group "forced sellers".[10] He said there would be no further mass redundancies beyond 173 positions already cut under a voluntary-departure plan, while Accor's shares fell 7.5 per cent around the announcement.[10]

Building an asset-light, brand-led group, 2014 to 2019

Through the mid-2010s Bazin accelerated the shift away from owning hotel property. In July 2016, he won shareholder approval for the acquisition of FRHI Holdings Limited, owner of the Fairmont, Raffles and Swissôtel brands, financed in part by a capital increase for the Qatar Investment Authority and Kingdom Holding Company, which both became significant shareholders in his company with board representation.[12] At the time of that transaction, Bazin's company employed more than 240,000 people across 95 countries and operated more than 4,000 properties.[12]

In October 2017, Bazin announced an agreement to acquire the Australian operator Mantra Group for AUD 3.96 a share in cash, adding 127 properties and more than 20,000 rooms across Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Hawaii, and more than 5,500 Mantra employees, under the Peppers, Mantra and BreakFree brands.[13] Weeks later, at Challenges magazine's Economic Summit on 30 November 2017, Bazin said he was preparing a strategic alliance with a major internet company and gave himself eighteen months to conclude it, framing the move as a response to the fact that "the vast majority of our clients come two or three times a year to an Accor hotel, while Amazon's customers come three or four times a week, and Facebook's ten times a day".[14] Bazin said his hotels were then opening at a rate of 260 a year, adding 40,000 rooms, hiring 80,000 people annually while losing 50,000 trained staff who left, and employing 270,000 people across 4,200 properties.[14] He described a plan to generate revenue from guests between hotel stays by investing in the vacation-rental company Travel Keys and the digital concierge service John Paul, telling the summit that pooling the 270,000 people working across his 4,200 hotels to offer services such as parcel reception or restaurant bookings to nearby city-dwellers, a population he said would double by 2030 because of rural exodus, could eventually account for a quarter to a third of his company's profits.[14] Interviewed separately by Le Monde in November 2017, Bazin said his company "must absolutely diversify" as successive waves of digital disruption pushed it to sell its real estate and invent new services.[15]

In June 2018, Bazin agreed to a 50 per cent stake in the Los Angeles-based lifestyle hospitality company sbe Entertainment Group, founded by Sam Nazarian, for a total investment of around $319 million, comprising $125 million for ordinary shares and $194 million toward refinancing sbe's existing preferred debt.[16] Two of Bazin's lifestyle-concierge investments of the period, Onefinestay and John Paul, were later written down by €246 million in 2018, a deal critics cited as an example of spending that strayed from his hotel core business.[8]

As part of the same asset-light programme, Bazin sold an 85.8 per cent stake in the Polish operator Orbis to AccorInvest in December 2019 for PLN 4.55 billion (about €1.06 billion), months after having separately bought Orbis's hotel management and franchise business for €286 million.[17] By the time of his December 2019 results, Bazin reported revenue of €4.05 billion for the year, up 16 per cent, and pre-tax profit of €603 million, operating around 5,000 hotels and 730,000 rooms in 100 countries with roughly 300,000 employees.[8]

In 2018, under investor pressure, Bazin abandoned plans to acquire a stake in the airline group Air France-KLM, a reversal The Sunday Times described as "a blow to his credibility" from which, an unnamed investor said, "we are not sure he has recovered yet".[8]

Views on tenure and the 2020 pandemic downturn

In a March 2020 interview, as the coronavirus pandemic began to disrupt travel, Bazin, then 58, described his approach to leadership and succession: "I have been advocating for a long, long time that a chief executive should never stay more than ten years", he said, adding "after a certain time you don't think right any more because you are full of certitude, and you become obnoxious and people are fearful of you", and that as executive chairman he had committed to leave Accor by 2023.[8] He said Accor's hotels in China had already lost €5 million in sales as roughly a fifth of its hotels there closed and occupancy fell 90 per cent, and that Accor's share price had fallen almost 40 per cent since February 2018 to €30.76, valuing the group at €8.3 billion, prompting a plan to cut debt, then €2.5 billion, and return cash to shareholders through a €1 billion buyback.[8] He did not leave Accor in 2023; he was instead reappointed chairman and chief executive in 2025, and in 2026 set a new departure horizon of May 2028.[3][4]

Ennismore, Orient Express and continued expansion, 2021 to 2026

In October 2021, Bazin closed a joint venture with the lifestyle hospitality entrepreneur Sharan Pasricha, combining their brands into a new entity named Ennismore, in which Bazin's company held 66.67 per cent and Pasricha 33.33 per cent; the combined business brought together fourteen hotel and co-working brands, including 21c Museum Hotels, 25hours, Delano, Hyde, Mama Shelter, Mondrian, SLS, SO/ and The Hoxton, across 87 operating properties with 141 more in the pipeline.[18]

Bazin's company acquired the Orient Express brand in 2022, and in June 2024 he announced a strategic partnership with LVMH, under which the luxury conglomerate took a stake in the Orient Express brand, in the company that will operate future Orient Express hotels and trains, and in the entity that will own two purpose-built sailing ships, the first under construction at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in France; the partnership also covers new Orient Express hotels planned in Rome and Venice.[19] Bernard Arnault, LVMH's chairman and chief executive, said Orient Express "epitomizes the art of refined living and the audacity that drives each of our Houses".[19]

In February 2025, Bazin's board reaffirmed the strategic objectives it had set for 2027 at its June 2023 Capital Markets Day and proposed renewing his mandate a year early; shareholders approved a new three-year term for Bazin as chairman and chief executive at the annual meeting on 28 May 2025, running until the shareholders' meeting called to approve the 2027 financial statements, and appointed Isabelle Simon vice-chairwoman and lead independent director in place of Iris Knobloch.[20]

In 2026, Bazin moved to sell his remaining roughly 30 per cent stake in Essendi, the former AccorInvest hotel-property vehicle, to a consortium of Blackstone and Colony Capital's investment-management arm. He and Blackstone signed a memorandum of understanding on 1 April 2026 for a stake sale worth up to €975 million, and a definitive binding agreement followed on 23 July 2026 on the same terms, comprising €675 million on closing and an earn-out of up to €300 million, with Essendi's hotels progressively converted to twenty-year franchise agreements and most proceeds earmarked for an additional €500 million share buyback.[21][22] The disposal was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approval.[22]

Succession announcement, May 2026

At his company's annual shareholders' meeting on 27 May 2026, Bazin said the term he had just begun would be his last. "I was clear with the board of directors and the board was equally clear with me, this will be my last term," he told the meeting. "Now, it is the time to lay the groundwork in terms of succession planning."[4] He added that he would remain in the role until May 2028 "unless the board of directors finds the right person beforehand" to succeed him, and said there were "many talents" inside and outside the business who could fit the profile of its next chief executive.[4] French trade press reported that the declaration, made live at the meeting, did not appear in his company's official press release on the meeting.[23]

In the first half of 2026, Bazin reported consolidated revenue of €2.76 billion, up from €2.745 billion in the first half of 2025, with revenue per available room up 2.2 per cent and occupancy at 64 per cent; growth in the Premium, Midscale & Economy division was partly offset by a decline in Luxury & Lifestyle revenue linked to regional conflict in the Middle East and the disposal of some Paris Society entertainment venues.[24]

Leadership and management style

Colleagues and investors have described Bazin as a hands-on, highly verbal chief executive who spends much of his time travelling to meet owners, franchisees and governments. He has said he spends about 260 days a year on the road, a third of his time with hotel owners and government officials, a third with his own team, and a third with digital start-ups "just to know who is going to be disrupting me next".[8] He has described studying competitors directly rather than only competing with them: he said he had met Ritesh Agarwal, the young founder of the budget-hotel disruptor Oyo, "at least twelve times", calling him "super smart, savvy, a workaholic, first mover. Not very nice", before clarifying, "when I say not very nice, I am actually smiling. I respect him and I think he respects me."[8]

At his first strategy presentation in November 2013, analysts and journalists described him as alternately "ironic", "authoritarian" and "relaxed", able to deploy both provocation and charm, and willing to criticise his predecessor's team directly, saying "there were too many initiatives, too many projects, and not enough resources".[10] His friend Patrick Sayer, then chairman of the private equity firm Eurazéo, said at the time that Bazin had shown "a great deal of courage in moving to the other side of the screen", from investor to operator.[10]

Critics quoted by The Sunday Times described Bazin as a "showman" and an "empire builder" prone to eccentric public performances, recalling a 2018 presentation during which he shaved and changed outfits partway through, asking the audience whether they had noticed.[8] An investor told the newspaper that "the business can close the valuation gap with its peers if it stays on track with the organic asset light rollout and returns surplus cash to shareholders", reflecting broader market frustration that cash raised from selling hotels was sometimes redeployed into acquisitions outside Accor's core business.[8] Bazin has acknowledged the record is mixed, saying: "I'm trying so many things and failing on so many."[8]

On workforce diversity, Bazin committed Accor to the United Nations' HeForShe campaign, pledging in a published 2015 commitment to close the gender pay gap for the group's roughly 180,000 employees worldwide by 2020, to double the share of women in country-level chief operating officer roles by 2020, and to triple the share of women on Accor's executive committee by 2018.[25] At the time of that pledge, Accor said women made up 46 per cent of its total workforce but held a minority of hotel general manager positions despite representing the majority of hospitality school graduates.[25] By 2025, Accor reported that 42.2 per cent of its executive committee members were women.[7]

Bazin's network within French business and politics extends to his time at Colony Capital, where he worked alongside Emmanuel Macron when Macron was a banker at Rothschild seconded to Colony; Bazin later described Macron, by then president of France, as "the right man, at the right age, in the right place", while cautioning that "French politics is immensely difficult . . . so he needs to keep his courage, because it's going to be more and more difficult".[8]

Major deals and strategic decisions

The central strategic decision of Bazin's tenure has been turning a property-owning hotel company into an asset-light operator built on management and franchise contracts and brand licensing, a shift he began advocating as a Colony Capital-appointed director before 2013 and accelerated once he became chief executive.[10][6] Under this strategy, Bazin sold the great majority of his company's owned hotels to third-party landlords and leased them back, reducing its exposure to Europe from about 80 per cent of its hotels five years earlier to 42 per cent by early 2020.[8]

Alongside disposals, Bazin used the proceeds to expand his brand portfolio through acquisition: FRHI (Fairmont, Raffles and Swissôtel) in 2016; Mantra Group in Australia and the Pacific in 2017 and 2018; a 50 per cent stake in sbe Entertainment Group in 2018; the Orbis management and franchise business in Poland in 2019, followed by the sale of his majority shareholding in listed Orbis itself; the Ennismore lifestyle joint venture in 2021; and the Orient Express brand, partnered with LVMH from 2024.[12][13][16][17][18][19] Bazin's most recent major divestiture, agreed in 2026, was the sale of his remaining stake in Essendi (formerly AccorInvest) to Blackstone and Colony Capital's investment-management arm for up to €975 million, with Essendi's hotel portfolio converting to long-term franchise agreements.[21][22]

Not every strategic bet succeeded. Bazin's investments in the concierge and lifestyle-rental businesses Onefinestay and John Paul led to a €246 million write-down in 2018, and his planned investment in a stake in Air France-KLM was abandoned that year after investor opposition.[8]

Financial and market performance

Under Bazin, the group he led grew substantially as measured by employees, hotel count and countries of operation, even as it shed most of its owned real estate. At the closing of the FRHI acquisition in mid-2016, the business he ran employed more than 240,000 people in 95 countries and operated more than 4,000 hotels.[12] By late 2017, he reported 270,000 employees across 4,200 hotels, opening roughly 260 new hotels a year.[14] By early 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic, Bazin's company had around 300,000 employees, 5,000 hotels and 730,000 rooms in 100 countries, with 2019 revenue of €4.05 billion, up 16 per cent, and pre-tax profit of €603 million.[8] No dividend was paid for the 2019, 2020 or 2021 financial years because of the pandemic.[26]

The share price of the company Bazin led fell almost 40 per cent between February 2018 and March 2020, to around €30.76, before recovering over the following years.[8] According to disclosed year-end closing prices, shares closed 2021 at €28.45, 2022 at €23.35, 2023 at €34.60, 2024 at €47.04 and 2025 at €48.22, having traded as high as €51.10 during 2025; dividends resumed in 2023, of €1.05 per share for the 2022 financial year, rising to €1.18 for 2023, €1.26 for 2024 and a proposed €1.35 for 2025.[26] Across the same period the share count fell from about 261.9 million shares outstanding at the end of 2021 to about 234.7 million at the end of 2025, reflecting a sustained buyback programme funded in large part by disposal proceeds.[26]

By the end of the 2025 financial year, under Bazin's leadership, the business he chaired reported consolidated revenue of €5,639 million, recurring EBITDA of €1,201 million, recurring free cash flow of €632 million, net income attributable to shareholders of €449 million, and a market capitalisation of €11.3 billion, with a network of 5,836 hotels and 881,427 rooms across 110 countries, plus a further 1,527 hotels and 257,134 rooms in development, and more than 380,000 employees.[7] In the first half of 2026, consolidated revenue was €2.76 billion, up from €2.745 billion a year earlier, with revenue per available room up 2.2 per cent and occupancy of 64 per cent.[24]

As chairman and chief executive, Bazin's gross annual fixed salary was €950,000 in both 2024 and 2025, unchanged since 1 January 2016.[27] His annual variable compensation for 2025 was set by the board at €1,556,577, equivalent to 111.2 per cent of his reference variable amount, based on performance against recurring EBITDA, free cash flow, net unit growth and environmental, social and governance criteria including water-intensity reduction, hotel eco-certification and the share of women in roles at vice-president level and above.[28] Including performance shares valued at €2,659,975 at grant, his total AFEP-MEDEF-format compensation for 2025 was €5,228,651, down slightly from €5,505,396 for 2024.[29] The 87,218 performance shares granted to him in 2025, worth 280 per cent of his fixed salary, vest only if he remains in office through 17 April 2028 and subject to internal targets on recurring EBITDA, free cash flow, energy-intensity reduction and food-waste reduction, together with Accor's total shareholder return relative to a composite index of Meliá, Whitbread, Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt and IHG.[28] He is entitled, if removed from office involuntarily and subject to performance conditions measured over the prior three years, to severance equal to twice his combined fixed and variable compensation for the last full financial year, but received no severance payment in 2025, no exceptional bonus, and no compensation for his separate role as a director.[28] He participates in a defined-contribution retirement savings plan and a frozen defined-benefit pension plan that stopped accruing new entitlements after 31 December 2019; his vested rights under the defined-benefit plan amounted to €43,709 for 2025, equivalent to 1.55 per cent of his reference compensation that year.[30] As of 31 December 2025, he held 655,333 Accor shares.[2] The Sunday Times reported his pay at £4.1 million (roughly €4.1 million then) in its March 2020 profile, before several subsequent increases.[8]

Board memberships and outside roles

At the time of the FRHI transaction in July 2016, which enlarged Accor's board to accommodate new shareholder representatives from Qatar Investment Authority and Kingdom Holding Company, the board that Bazin chaired had sixteen members, including one director representing employees, with seven women and nine independent directors.[12] By the end of 2025, the board's committee structure comprised five standing committees: the Commitments Committee, the Audit, Compliance and Risks Committee, the Appointments and Compensation Committee, the ESG Committee, and the International Strategy Committee.[3]

As of 31 December 2025, according to his company's own disclosure, Bazin held the following outside positions in addition to his main role.[31]

He has been chairman of the Gustave Roussy Foundation, which supports the Gustave Roussy cancer research hospital near Paris, since July 2023, having earlier served as vice-president of the foundation's supervisory board.[5][10] He has been a member of the board of the American industrial group General Electric since 2016, and of the board of GE Aerospace since April 2024.[5] He joined the board of the Riyadh School of Tourism and Hospitality (RSTH) in Saudi Arabia in August 2024.[5]

Within companies controlled by his own group, Bazin has chaired the boards of Orient Express SAS, Accor Luxury & Lifestyle SAS and O.E. Management Company SAS, and sat as a director of Ennismore Lifestyle Group Ltd in the United Kingdom.[31] He has also chaired or managed several personal holding and investment vehicles, including Bazeo Europe SAS, Bazeo Invest SNC, and a number of French property companies (SCI), and has chaired the supervisory board of Molitor Investment SCA, the vehicle behind the redevelopment of the historic Molitor swimming pool in Paris, a project he backed personally as well as through Colony Capital.[31][10] He has also served as a director of the Luxembourg holding company Sisters Soparfi.[31]

Earlier in his career, Bazin served on the boards of Carrefour and Edenred as a Colony Capital representative, leaving the Carrefour board around the time he took up his present role in 2013.[10] He was chairman of Paris Saint-Germain from 2009.[5] He was administrator, from 2013, and then president, from 2015, of the board of the Théâtre du Châtelet, a Paris opera and theatre venue, stepping down from the presidency in January 2022 after seven years in the role; the board publicly thanked him for his "engagement and availability" and elected the broadcaster and Théâtre de la Ville president Xavier Couture to succeed him.[32] The same disclosure of his positions over the preceding five years also lists a former chairmanship of Accor Acquisition Company, a former directorship and chairmanship of Adagio SAS, and former international directorships at Banyan Tree Holdings in Singapore, H World Group (formerly Huazhu/China Lodging Group) in China, AAPC India Hotel Management, and Ennismore Holdings Ltd in the United Kingdom.[31]

Controversies

Accor has, since 2011, faced allegations that it colluded with French intelligence officials in connection with the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a potential presidential rival to Nicolas Sarkozy, who was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel employee at the Sofitel New York, an Accor-branded hotel. The Sunday Times reported suggestions that intelligence officers connected to Sarkozy, then the French president, had learned of the alleged assault and tipped off United States law enforcement; Bazin declined to comment further on the allegations when asked by the newspaper.[8]

Bazin's personal friendship with Sarkozy, which began when Sarkozy, then mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, helped negotiate the release of children held hostage in a 1993 school siege that included Bazin's own daughter, led Bazin to invite Sarkozy onto Accor's board after Sarkozy's unsuccessful bid for his party's nomination in the 2017 French presidential election.[8] Sarkozy was paid €79,563 for his Accor directorship in 2018; Bazin said the relationship was "worth every cent" because it gave him access to heads of state and government during his travels.[8] Sarkozy resigned from Accor's board on 17 December 2025 after eight years as a director; Bazin thanked him for "his many years of contribution to the work of the Board of Directors" and said Sarkozy had "played an instrumental role in the transformation and growth of Accor".[33]

Bazin's management of Accor's strategy has also drawn criticism. Investors and commentators described him as a "showman" and "empire builder" for spending disposal proceeds on acquisitions, such as Onefinestay and John Paul, that led to a €246 million write-down in 2018, and for abandoning a planned stake in Air France-KLM in 2018 after shareholder pushback, which The Sunday Times described as damaging his credibility with investors.[8]

In 2020, Bazin told The Sunday Times that, as executive chairman, he had committed to leaving Accor by 2023, citing his own view that chief executives should not serve more than ten years.[8] He did not leave in 2023; Accor's board instead renewed his mandate for a further three years from May 2025, and he announced in May 2026 that this new term, due to run until 2028, would be his last.[20][4]

At Accor's annual shareholders' meeting on 27 May 2026, the compensation policy applicable to Bazin as chairman and chief executive was approved by only 74.23 per cent of votes cast, down from 88.88 per cent approval for the equivalent policy the previous year, indicating a marked rise in shareholder opposition to his pay package even as the policy's components were left largely unchanged from 2025.[9][34]

Personal life

Bazin is married to Juliette Bazin and has four children, who were between the ages of 26 and 32 in 2020.[8] On 13 May 1993, his then three-year-old daughter, Fleur, was among 21 children taken hostage at a nursery school in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, by Erick Schmitt, an unemployed entrepreneur who called himself the "human bomb" and had strapped explosives to his body; Bazin, then 31, spent two days with other parents in a classroom during the siege, saying that had the bomb gone off, "I would have exploded with everybody else".[8] Nicolas Sarkozy, then mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, negotiated the release of fifteen children, including Fleur, before police stormed the building and shot Schmitt; the episode began Bazin's long friendship with Sarkozy.[8]

Bazin divides his time between homes in Paris and Brittany, and has said sailing is central to his sense of wellbeing: "I am the happiest person on the planet provided I have three things: bare feet, water and sailing."[8] He drives a Peugeot 5008, explaining that if he is "going to convince French corporations to stay in Accor all over the planet, the last thing I'm going to do is not drive a French vehicle".[8] He has named La comédie (in)humaine, by Nicolas Bouzou and Julia de Funès, as a favourite book, and the 1969 film La Piscine, directed by Jacques Deray and starring Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, as a favourite film; he has cited Mozart among his favourite music.[8] He wears a collection of bracelets that he has said each carry "a true meaning" to him.[8]

Philanthropy

Bazin has chaired the Gustave Roussy Foundation, which supports the Gustave Roussy cancer research hospital outside Paris, since July 2023, after earlier serving as vice-president of its supervisory board, and has named it as his own principal charitable cause.[5][8] Under his leadership, Accor reported that more than 17,400 people benefited from solidarity projects the company initiated in 2025, part of a wider corporate social responsibility programme that also includes the HeForShe gender-equality commitments described above.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 <ref>"Accor Confirms Sebastien Bazin's Appointment as Chairman, CEO".27 August 2013.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 <ref>Jenna Graber."Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin to step down".27 May 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 <ref>"Sébastien Bazin, Group Chairman & CEO".Accor.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 <ref>"Sébastien Bazin to be Accor chief as it seeks 'asset lite' policy".Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  8. ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19 8.20 8.21 8.22 8.23 8.24 8.25 8.26 8.27 8.28 8.29 8.30 8.31 8.32 8.33 8.34 8.35 <ref>Sabah Meddings."Interview: I know when to check out, says Accor's Sébastien Bazin".8 March 2020.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 <ref>"Compensation Policy Applicable to Corporate Officers in 2026: Results of the Votes".Accor.28 May 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  10. ↑ 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 10.10 10.11 10.12 <ref>"Sébastien Bazin, nouvel homme fort d'Accor".29 November 2013.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  11. ↑ <ref>Ivan Letessier."Sébastien Bazin quitte Colony Capital pour devenir PDG d'Accor".26 August 2013.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 <ref>"General Meeting July 12, 2016: Approval of FRHI Transaction and New Directors Appointed".AccorHotels.12 July 2016.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 <ref>"AccorHotels signs an agreement to acquire Mantra Group Limited".AccorHotels.AccorHotels.12 October 2017.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 <ref>"Sébastien Bazin annonce un accord stratégique entre Accor et un Gafa".30 November 2017.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  15. ↑ <ref>Philippe Escande."Sébastien Bazin : « AccorHotels doit absolument se diversifier »".16 November 2017.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 <ref>"AccorHotels et sbe Entertainment Group annoncent un partenariat stratégique".AccorHotels.AccorHotels.29 June 2018.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 <ref>"Accor announces the disposal of its 85.8% stake in Orbis to AccorInvest for €1.06bn".Accor.Accor.16 December 2019.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 <ref>"Closing of Joint Venture between Accor & Ennismore".Accor.Accor.4 October 2021.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 <ref>"LVMH and Accor join forces to take Orient Express to new horizons".Accor.Accor.13 June 2024.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 <ref>"Accor signs a memorandum of understanding on the sale of its stake in Essendi".Accor.Accor.1 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 <ref>"Accor signs a definitive binding agreement on the sale of its stake in Essendi".Accor.Accor.24 July 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  23. ↑ <ref>"Gouvernance | Accor : Sébastien Bazin annonce son départ d'ici 2028 et ouvre la course à sa succession".28 May 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 <ref>"Consolidated Financial Statements as of June 30, 2026".Accor.29 July 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 <ref>"Corporate Impact Champion: Sebastien Bazin, Chairman & CEO, Accor".HeForShe (UN Women).Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  27. ↑ <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  29. ↑ <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  30. ↑ <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 31.3 31.4 <ref>"2025 Universal Registration Document".Accor.10 April 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  32. ↑ <ref>"Xavier Couture, nouveau Président du Théâtre du Châtelet".2 February 2022.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  33. ↑ <ref>"Change in the composition of the Board".Accor.Accor.17 December 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  34. ↑ <ref>"Compensation Policy Applicable to Corporate Officers in 2025: Results of the Votes".Accor.29 May 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
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