Welcome to Inside the Corner Office, a podcast where you'll be taken behind the scenes of the daily life of a CEO. I'm Thomas Buberl, CEO of AXA. In each episode, we'll be joined by a leader of a major organization. Welcome back — today we have a guest who has redefined what leadership can look like at the top. Sébastien Bazin has led Accor, a world-leading hospitality group, since 2013, after a career in finance, private equity, and as chairman of Paris Saint-Germain Football Club. Sébastien's story is a concrete illustration of great leadership that doesn't always come from a traditional path, but from audacity, courage, and instinct. Sébastien, welcome.
Do you remember the first time when we met?
No. Probably when you got elected CEO.
No, I remember the shock when I saw you being elected, being a non-French. I remember that very well because I knew your opponent. And I said to myself, putting a German, now a French national, at the helm of AXA — it's gutsy, audacious. I wanted to meet you because you must be of a different blood. In hindsight, they made a very wise decision.
I had a similar thought when I met you. When you come to a new country, you have an idea of what your French colleagues could look like, and I was surprised you didn't fit my stereotype. You came across as creative and very direct. Looking at your path — from finance to football to hospitality — it's not traditional. Was that a result of many accidents, or was it planned?
Nothing is planned in my life, and nothing should be. Many French CEOs have been through extraordinary education paths — Polytechnique, great schools — programmed to one day be the boss. I was programmed to do nothing. My parents gave me the best education, and they died 27 and 25 years ago from cancer. They left me the most precious thing: values, ethics, being a Christian, and liking meeting people. I never had any fantasy or ambition to be a CEO. It came by accident. I'm enjoying the ride. I will leave Accor the same way I got in — no frustration, no bitterness. It's pure luck. My life has been about meeting someone I wanted to share a journey with. It has nothing to do with size, title, or status. That's simply not me.
Let's take these destinations and explain them more. You started in finance, Colony Capital if I remember, and then switched to football. Who did you meet, and what made you jump into that?
I started much earlier. I owe many things to my father-in-law, who's 96. He got me a job at American Express as a stockbroker on Wall Street at 23. I met takeover raiders, went to San Francisco for a company acquisition, then was an investment banker at PaineWebber between London and New York. Then I went into hospitality and met Tom Barrack at Colony Capital for 16 years. I went from stockbroker to investment banker to private equity principal. Throughout this journey, I wanted unknown territory — buying a building is boring. We bought a company, and then Canal Plus wanted to sell Paris Saint-Germain for virtually nothing — €21 million. It was a great investment that took 90% of my life for 3% of my investments. For five and a half years at the helm, it was brutal. I felt I knew something about sport — I knew virtually nothing. When you own a club like PSG, people look through your eyes to win. I was not winning because I was not spending on players, and I was not spending because there was no economic model. I got insulted for five years in the streets of Paris, pretty badly. But it built the armor and made me stronger. Since then, 15 years ago, I never read anything about myself. Whenever I do an interview, I never go back and I never prepare anything. I have one blessing: I don't live through the eyes of others. What people perceive of me is probably important, but I don't care. I know who I am. I know what I do. I feel sorry for those who want to be admired every day, because most of those days you're probably unhappy. I'm happy by birth.
You mentioned many things. Let's do one by one. How do you smell the opportunity? Going from investment banking into football is not very logical, and later into hospitality — how do you sense it, and when do you know it's the right moment to switch?
I don't know whether it's the right moment. I don't analyze industry verticals. It's just by accident. Meeting the guy from Canal Plus who needed to sell over 10 days — he said, 'Sébastien, would you buy the club?' It wasn't planned. The franchise was bigger than life. Most of my life is unplanned. That doesn't mean I don't think before making a decision, even if I only have 10 days. You'd better work those 10 days understanding the risk and having the right diagnostic. But 90% of everything I do has been provoked by something I did not plan for, by someone I've met. I'm a very good listener. If you listen and pay attention to people you meet, something comes out of it. The only place where I've settled down, probably due to wisdom and age, is at Accor. When you run a company of this size, you plan four, five, seven years ahead and cannot pivot all the time. This is the first time in 13 years where I've been rigorous about not changing directions, because when you embark 300,000 people, you cannot change direction all the time.
So your secret is basically: meet many people.
Yes. Meet the unexpected, listen well, then you can create opportunities. And travel — I've been telling everyone I meet: go out of your comfort zone.
Meet those people you have no chance of meeting other than by going to them. Different skin colors, different religions, different languages. Go outside of your comfort zone.
The second thing that struck me was resilience. You got a lot of negative feedback — people talking to you in the street. The concept of resilience is easy to think about, but living through criticism isn't always easy. How did you deal with it?
It makes you stronger. I understood those blaming me during the PSG years because they expected the best team, the best players. For many of them, Paris Saint-Germain was tattooed on them — that was their life, their blood. And here was this guy not committing enough. I don't blame them. The only reason I didn't fulfill what they wanted was that it wasn't my money — I was acting on behalf of other people's money. I had a fiduciary duty. Admitting that those criticizing me are actually right — do I feel bad? The answer is no. I've been married for 41 years. I know who I am. I know what I stand for, and I know who I report to.
Another thing that struck me: you never look back. You live in the moment, look forward, but never look back.
That's also not very normal. Everybody is normally very proud of what they've done in the past. You start almost at zero again. How did this principle make you stronger?
I don't look back because I have no bitterness, no frustration about something I should have done and didn't. I'm not looking for any media or even any thank-you note. You and I know being CEO of a listed company, you're never going to get a thank-you note. My dream, which I will never accomplish — it's super sad — is I've been dreaming of being an architect. Because there's nothing better than seeing a site with your own eyes, thinking of what you could craft, designing it on paper, convincing the mayor or an investor, and then three or five years later, looking back and saying, 'That building is a bit of me.' Which is probably why we're doing Orient Express and the yacht — this notion of looking back for pieces of art that I've been part of.
But wouldn't you say that after 13 years, you are also the architect of what Accor is today?
It's a difficult question because the two founders are extremely present, and we owe everything to them. Starting from scratch is the hardest thing. I came late in the game. My legacy at Accor, if there is one, is that it was an extraordinary French-European organization, and we made it French in origin but international, global. We went faster in emerging markets. I've done it differently from my predecessors, but my successor will probably do even better. One thing that changed personally: when I started at Accor, I was a pretty abrasive financial person — giving advice, critiquing everyone. In reflection, I was probably wrong half the time. 'Yaka,' as we say in French — it's not as easy as one could say from the outside. I crossed the bridge because I wanted to test myself. I realized that when you're a doer, when you're embarking people, you have to be patient — not my best quality. You draft for five years, embark 360,000 people, and it doesn't work all the time. You need to lead and get people to trust you. So I went from a financial person to hopefully being 90% human-capital driven. I love the people I'm with. I love embarking underprivileged people. My life is now all about humankind.
What made you change? Was it the people that made you shift from financial prick to somebody who loves people?
They changed me. The people I met when I started at Accor — they were pretty aggressive with me. They hated me because I'd been on the board for 20 years giving wrong advice and talking too harshly. I wanted to know why, and I finally realized: it's because I talked before I listened. Going to so many territories, understanding that Accor is a school of life — two-thirds of our population never went to university. We gave them a job. When somebody never had the privilege I had, you realize that those who need the most, you'd better be there for them.
When we started talking earlier, you said you didn't go on a normal French Christmas holiday. You stayed in Paris and went to the floors, speaking to people on the last day of work. What feeling does it give you to go to your colleagues and listen to them?
