Controversial charmer who got cut off at France Telecom

MICHEL BON has, if not a job, a nice sense of timing. Not only has he chosen to bail out from presenting the most disastrous set of results ever recorded by France Telecom today - a real Friday the 13th for the company - but it is also seven years to the day since he was appointed chairman.

Thanks to the destruction of the company's balance sheet, the controversy surrounding his tenure as chairman has been every bit as intense as the battle over his initial appointment. Last night, however, he finally quit.

For the one-time government finance inspector was by no means first choice for the job. It was French President Jacques Chirac who persuaded Bon to take it after the withdrawal of merchant banker Francois Henrot, now a big wheel with Rothschild. And France Telecom's unions were so appalled at his nomination that their seven representatives on the board abstained, leaving him to scrape home with backing from only 12 of the 21 board members.

The subject of all this objection is a tall, publicly charming 59-year-old with ageing-film-star looks and the air of an aristocrat who works only to provide an outlet for his talents.

Actually, the aristocracy is more his wife's side: he married Catharine Brunet de Sairigne in 1971 and they have four children. It is true he does not need to work. After all, last year he received just e279,116 (£174,866) - a pay packet that makes him the worst-paid chairman among France's 40 biggest companies. But Bon can take it or leave it because in 1993 he got a e2.5m pay-off from hypermarkets group Carrefour, where he was also chairman.

Born in Grenoble, Bon graduated from all the right universities, including Stanford and the elite Ecole Nationale de l'Administration, (in the same class as Bank of France Governor Jean-Claude Trichet). After a spell in the civil service, he joined France's largest bank, Credit Agricole, before Carrefour hired him in 1985 as deputy managing director.

After tripling its sales and quadrupling its profits, he left in 1992 when the owners declined to back his expansion plans. He then spent two years streamlining the French national employment service, arousing union ire, before joining France Telecom to prepare its float and position it for the opening of European telecoms markets to competition in 1998.

Egged on by the last Socialist government, he spent £60bn on foreign acquisitions, building a national champion with borrowed money. With a State bail-out now needed, senior ministers, with the exception of Finance Minister Francis Mer, have been calling for his scalp.

Airbus chief Noel Forgeard and Thierry Breton, who miraculously rescued electronics group Thomson MultiMedia, are among the executives who have been approached. Until now, neither has been willing to take the pay cut.