Pierre-Etienne Franc, a former student of HEC Paris, is currently the Vice-President of Air Liquide Hydrogen Energy World Business Unit, and the Secretary of the Hydrogen Council, which he founded, for Air Liquide, with Toyota.
Pierre-Etienne Franc joined the Air Liquide Group in 1995 as strategic analyst for the Group general management. He then was Business Manager for energy markets (1997), Vice-president Strategy of the Venture Services Division (1999) and Vice-President in charge of the Metals Market (2001). From 2005 to 2008, he has served as CEO and Business Director of Air Liquide Large Industry operations in Benelux and then became Growth Program Director of the corporate strategy plan “ALMA”.
From June 2010, Pierre-Etienne Franc supervised a portfolio of advanced businesses and technologies initiatives, in the fields of energy and environment (including hydrogen energy activities), space, aeronautics, cryogenics, and ALIAD the venture capital arm created by the Group in 2013. In 2016, he became Director of Advanced Markets and Technologies, a world business unit entirely dedicated to the development of these activities. Since 2017, Pierre-Etienne Franc is the Vice-President of Air Liquide Hydrogen Energy World Business Unit, and the Secretary of the Hydrogen Council.
In 2011, he has been elected (and re elected in 2012 and 2014) Chairman of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), the European Platform financing Hydrogen and Fuel Cell sector, with a budget of 1.4 BN€ within the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union.
He is author of three books (“Le Management du Client”, Eyrolles, 1994; “Hydrogen: the Energy Transition in the making!”, Manifesto/Gallimard, 2015; “Entreprise & bien commun, la performance et la vertu”, Editions du Palio, 2017).
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