Benoît Potier, Chairman and CEO of Air Liquide, to take over as Chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT)

Benoît Potier, Chairman and CEO of Air Liquide, succeeds Leif Johansson, Chairman of Ericsson and AstraZeneca, as Chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists as of June 1^st, 2014.

The European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), created in 1983, is a forum of 52 leaders of major companies of European parentage. These companies are drawn from a wide range of industry sectors in 18 European countries, and have a combined turnover exceeding € 1,300 billion, sustaining around 6.8 million jobs in the region. They invest more than € 51 billion annually in Research & Development (R&D), largely in Europe; which is equivalent to 18% of total EU R&D expenditure.

Benoît Potier, who joined Air Liquide in 1981 as an Engineer in the R&D Division and has held different positions in the Group in the Strategic Department as well as in Operations prior to being appointed Chief Executive Officer of Air Liquide in 1997 and Chairman and CEO in May 2006, joined ERT in 2007 and was elected ERT Vice-Chairman in 2010. Benoît Potier graduated from the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures (Paris, France) in 1979, and completed his executive education within the Wharton International Forum and the Advanced Management program at INSEAD.