Adolphe Demeure de Lespaul - Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Petrofina

Born in 1926. Doctor of law and degree in economics from the Catholic University of Leuven. Joined Petrofina in 1951. In charge of various missions abroad, mainly in the field of marketing, he returned to the head office in 1957 and was appointed deputy director attached to the managing director.

Very close indeed to Laurent Wolters, of whom he is in fact a sort of trusted man, he joined the Management Board in 1960, and became successively Chief Executive Officer attached to the Chairman in 1962, Director (1967), Chief Executive Officer (1969), Vice-Chairman (1973) and Chairman in 1979. He was therefore an integral part of the strategy followed throughout the period of the oil crises, in particular the decision to give priority to North America as the Group's geographic expansion area, exactly in line with its predecessors, as well as the decision to give priority to developing downstream activities, with a view to providing the Group with large, state-of-the-art industrial platforms. Died in 1985.