Renault says deputy CEO Delbos resigns

PARIS (Reuters) -The head of French carmaker Renault’s new mobility unit Mobilize and deputy CEO of the group Clotilde Delbos has resigned, the company said on Wednesday.

Renault said Delbos would leave at the end of December, without giving a reason for her departure. Fedra Ribeiro would be appointed CEO of Mobilize while Patrick Claude, head of group financial services, would take on Delbos’s role on an interim basis at Renault’s financial subsidiary RCI Banque, it said in a statement.

Delbos joined Renault in 2012 as group controller and was a seasoned executive who helped the transition between former boss Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested in Tokyo in 2018 on financial misconduct charges, and current CEO Luca de Meo, who took the helm in the summer of 2020.

Delbos, who also worked as Renault’s chief financial officer between 2016 and early 2022, had herself been tipped to take the CEO job before the board decided to call on outsider de Meo.

Renault is in the middle of a big and complex overhaul that will see it separate its activities in five businesses, deepen ties with China’s Geely and spin off its electric vehicles unit through a stock market listing next year.

The car maker’s shares dipped briefly after Delbos’s departure was first reported by a Le Monde reporter on Twitter but then recovered to close a touch higher.

(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume, Dominique Vidalon, Editing by Silvia Aloisi)