Under his leadership, a family business founded by his grandfather became the leading global tire manufacturer, dominating the market in Europe and the US.
A practising Roman Catholic, he was idiosyncratically non-hierarchical and conducted business from his hometown of Clermont-Ferrand in the rural Auvergne.
[3] While the buyout incurred debt for the company, Michelin stood firm in his decision to consolidate.
[6][7] A speaker read a text he wrote about the same topic for a conference organized by the Acton Institute in Rome in 2007.
He served as the Vice President of the Association Nationale des Sociétés par Actions alongside Edouard de Royère and Bertrand Collomb.
[4] They resided at La Bosse, his grandfather's mansion in Orcines near Clermont-Ferrand and summered in the Luberon.
[4] By the end of his life, he lived at EHPAD Ma Maison, a retirement community run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic charity in Clermont-Ferrand.
By developing the radial tire, he transformed a family and regional company into one of the biggest French groups and one of its best-known.
"[3] Former employee Carlos Ghosn, who served as the CEO of Renault and Nissan in 2015, called him "a humble and honest man, a humanist boss and captain of industry deeply attached to the global performance of a French industry with solid French roots.