Paris (AFP)

The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron played the continuity by choosing Jean-Pierre Farandou, senior executive of the SNCF, to succeed Guillaume Pepy at the head of the public rail group on 1 January 2020.

The proposal of the President of the Republic must be validated by the sustainable development committees of the National Assembly and the Senate, after its hearing, and approved by the Council of Ministers. The procedure must last anywhere from three weeks to one month.

Jean-Pierre Farandou, 62, has been working at SNCF since 1981. This close friend of Mr. Pepy is since 2012 boss of Keolis, the Group's public transport subsidiary.

Its name came relatively late among all those who have been cited in recent months to lead the "new SNCF" born of the latest railway reform, which will become a public limited company on 1 January 2020.

He himself watched the situation with a certain amusement. He had not openly started the race, probably handicapped by his age that will prevent him from two terms.

The executive would have preferred a profile from outside, but the complexity of the task, the requirement of knowledge of the railway field and the limitation of the salary to 450,000 euros gross per year have apparently complicated the recruitment.

The Elysée praises his experience and his legitimacy, his thorough knowledge of the company and his career in the region, and sees in him "a central personality in the world of transport".

Mr Farandou was elected to head the Union of Public and Railway Transport (UTP), the professional organization of the sector, one of the most urgent tasks of which is to complete the negotiation of the collective agreement. railway.

- Broken to tenders -

"Welcome to @JPFarandou at the @sncf Hoping that the new president is more attentive and more railway than the late Guillaume Pepy," tweeted the union South-Rail.

Born in July 1957 in Talence (Gironde), Jean-Pierre Farandou graduated from the Ecole des Mines de Paris.

After starting his career in a mining company in the United States, he joined the SNCF in 1981 as station manager, before climbing the ladder as project manager of the TGV Paris-Lille, founder of Thalys, director of the human resources, director of the Rhône-Alpes and Keolis Lyon region and director of the SNCF Proximités branch (Ile-de-France, TER and Intercités).

He was since August 2012 boss of Keolis, a subsidiary that has achieved last year nearly 6 billion euros in turnover (33 billion for the entire SNCF). Very open on the international market, Keolis is well-up for tenders - an experience that will certainly be useful with the arrival of competition in the railways.

Farandou had almost become CEO of SNCF Réseau in 2016, but his candidacy was then retoquée by the Arafer (the regulator of the sector) because it was considered too close to SNCF Mobilités.

He remained at the head of Keolis, Patrick Jeantet - at the time number 2 of Aéroports de Paris (ADP) - taking that of SNCF Réseau. Jeantet had openly applied to succeed Guillaume Pepy at the helm of the SNCF.

The railway law provides that the future public limited company with SNCF capital will have two others whose leaders will have to be appointed: SNCF Mobilités, which is currently headed by Mr. Pepy as the head office, and SNCF Réseau.

The procedure for the appointment of the future president of the SNCF is "transitory", and it "will be followed by a new procedure, during the first half of 2020, once the new architecture of the SNCF set up," said the Elysee Wednesday evening.

© 2019 AFP