Biography|Frédéric Saint-Geours — Named to Run Peugeot from the Ninth Floor of the 75

People remember the late-1990s Peugeot as a Folz-era group story told from the top of PSA.

The brand itself had a separate chair, and in February 1998 that chair passed to Frédéric Saint-Geours.

He had been directeur général adjoint of Automobiles Peugeot since 1990.

The February appointment made him directeur général of the lion marque and a member of the group's comité exécutif.

In June 1998 he joined the directoire.

The office was here: the attic floors of 75 avenue de la Grande-Armée.

Les Echos later described the eighth-floor cream carpet of the Peugeot family and the ninth-floor room that had been Roland Peugeot's.

He held the brand until 31 December 2007.

The public measure of those nine years is a shrinking European share.

Between 2002 and 2007 the lion's European market share fell from 8.9 percent to 7.1 percent, a figure Stéphane Lauer put in Le Monde on 15 February 2008.

He had wanted the group chair after Jacques Calvet and again after Jean-Martin Folz.

Christian Streiff was chosen instead.

Jean-Philippe Collin took Peugeot on 1 January 2008.

The announcement that he would leave the brand and stay as conseiller du président came in November 2007, from this same building.

A visitor in 2026 finds a rebuilt office, not a lion on the attic.

The decision still happened on this plot.

The February 1998 date is the one Caradisiac printed when the succession was first explained, and the one later PSA releases reused when they listed his titles.

Photo: Flickr photographer 12403504@N06, CC0, Peugeot frontage on avenue de la Grande-Armée, via Wikimedia Commons

Portrait: MEDEF, CC BY-SA 2.0, 27 August 2008, via Wikimedia Commons