Hinda Gharbi
"The day Bureau Veritas entered the CAC 40, I felt our employees’ pride. It’s a recognition of our expertise and it makes us more visible. It’s also a responsibility."
— Hinda Gharbi[1]
Overview
Hinda Gharbi | |
|---|---|
 Gharbi in 2023 | |
| Born | Template:MONTHNAME 1970 (age 55) Tunis, Tunisia |
| Citizenship | Tunisian, Australian |
| Education | Electrical engineering; signal processing |
| Alma mater | École nationale supérieure d’ingénieurs électriciens de Grenoble; Institut polytechnique de Grenoble |
| Occupation | Chief Executive Officer |
| Employer | Bureau Veritas |
| Known for | Chief Executive Officer of Bureau Veritas; senior executive at Schlumberger |
| Title | Chief Executive Officer |
| Term | June 2023 – present |
| Predecessor | Didier Michaud-Daniel |
| Board member of | Former director of Rio Tinto |
| Spouse | Australian citizen (name not public) |
| Children | 2 |
🌍 Hinda Gharbi (born August 1970) is a Tunisian-Australian engineer and business executive who has served as Chief Executive Officer of Bureau Veritas since June 2023.[2] After more than two decades at Schlumberger, where she rose from offshore field engineer to member of the group executive committee and executive vice president for global services and equipment,[3] she was recruited in 2022 by Bureau Veritas as chief operating officer and designated successor to long-serving CEO Didier Michaud-Daniel.[4] At the head of the 200-year-old testing, inspection and certification group she has launched the Leap 28 strategy to accelerate growth ahead of its bicentenary and overseen its inclusion in the CAC 40 index, making her one of a small number of women to lead a company in France’s blue-chip benchmark.[5][3]
Early life and education
🎓 Modest origins. Born in Tunis in August 1970, Gharbi grew up in a family of modest means but showed early aptitude for mathematics and science, which encouraged her to consider an engineering career abroad.[3][2] At the age of 22 she left Tunisia for France on a competitive scholarship, enrolling at the École nationale supérieure d’ingénieurs électriciens de Grenoble to study electrical engineering before completing a master’s degree in signal processing at the Institut polytechnique de Grenoble.[6] This technical training laid the foundation for her later focus on data, risk and complex industrial systems.
💡 Formative challenges. Moving alone to a new country in her early twenties and entering a male-dominated engineering environment forced Gharbi, by her own account, to “grow up fast” and develop a strong sense of discipline and resilience.[3] She has later described how mastering difficult coursework, adapting to a different culture and learning to assert herself among mostly male peers helped shape a leadership style that combines analytical problem-solving with persistence and emotional control.[7]
Career
Schlumberger
🛢️ Field engineer years. After graduating, Gharbi joined Schlumberger in 1996 as a field engineer in Nigeria’s offshore oilfields, where she was reportedly the only woman on the rig at the time.[4][3] Working on drilling platforms in the Gulf of Guinea, she carried out geophysical measurements and logging operations in high-pressure conditions, sometimes “three kilometres under the sea” without internet access and with responsibility for fixing equipment if it failed.[3] Former Schlumberger chief executive Andrew Gould later recalled that she carried out this field work “exceptionally well” and that her determination during those early assignments stood out inside the group.[3]
📈 Transition to management. After around eight years in operational and technical roles, Gharbi moved into management positions, first in technology development and then in leadership of Schlumberger’s Wireline division, which provides subsurface data services to oil and gas clients.[3][2] In 2007 she was appointed to lead the company’s Asia-Pacific business from Bangkok, overseeing activities across Southeast Asia and becoming one of Schlumberger’s most senior female executives in the region in her mid-thirties.[4][2] In 2013 she made an unconventional move into human resources as vice-president of HR at the company’s London headquarters, a rotation that broadened her experience of talent management and corporate culture beyond operations and technology.[3][2]
🧭 Executive leadership roles. Following her HR assignment, Gharbi returned to operational leadership, taking charge of Schlumberger’s Reservoir Characterization and Wireline activities worldwide and joining the group executive committee in 2017.[6][3] Her profile within the company grew further as she was considered one of the internal candidates to succeed the outgoing CEO in 2019, though the board ultimately chose Olivier Le Peuch for the role.[2][3] In July 2020 she was appointed executive vice-president for Services & Equipment, putting her in charge of Schlumberger’s global oilfield services and its early digital transformation initiatives.[6] That same year she joined the board of Rio Tinto as an independent non-executive director, adding exposure to the mining sector and Anglo-Australian corporate governance.[8]
🔄 Departure and pivot. Gharbi has said that she participated fully in Schlumberger’s CEO succession process and accepted the board’s decision to appoint a colleague “without bitterness”, helping to organise the transition before deciding that she would seek a chief executive role elsewhere.[3][7] By early 2022, after 26 years with the group and having held almost every major operational responsibility short of the top job, she chose to leave and look for a position where she could exercise full strategic authority as CEO.[6][3]
Bureau Veritas
🏢 Recruitment to Bureau Veritas. In May 2022 the Paris-based testing, inspection and certification company Bureau Veritas announced that it had hired Gharbi as chief operating officer, explicitly presenting her as the designated successor to CEO Didier Michaud-Daniel.[4][3] The group, founded in 1828 and employing around 80,000 people worldwide, had never previously been led by a non-French national or by a woman, making her expected promotion a milestone both for the company and for French corporate leadership more broadly.[4][3]
🏛️ Rise to chief executive. After a structured handover period, Gharbi was promoted to deputy CEO in January 2023 and took over as chief executive officer in June 2023.[6][2] On the day she formally became CEO, it was announced that Bureau Veritas would join the CAC 40 index, and she became only the fourth woman to lead a company included in the benchmark, alongside peers at Orange, Engie and Veolia.[3][5] Colleagues and observers have described her public style as determined but understated, noting that she tends not to dwell on the symbolic aspects of her appointment even when they attract media attention.[3]
🚀 Leap 28 strategy. Soon after taking the helm, Gharbi presented the Leap 28 strategic plan, designed to guide Bureau Veritas towards its 2028 bicentenary by focusing on higher-value markets, targeted acquisitions and the development of new services in areas such as renewable energy, supply-chain sustainability and cybersecurity testing.[3] In 2024 the group completed around ten mainly small specialist acquisitions, representing roughly €180 million of investment, and signalled that it would be prepared to pursue larger targets with annual revenues between €100 million and €500 million in subsequent years.[3] At the same time, she began exiting non-core activities, concentrating resources on segments seen as offering stronger secular growth, and rolled out a large training and upskilling programme for inspectors and engineers to prepare them for evolving client demands in climate, safety and data analytics.[3] In interviews she has framed the strategy as an effort to “elevate the company’s performance to new heights” while preserving its reputation for trust and technical rigour.[7]
📊 Financial performance. Under Gharbi’s leadership Bureau Veritas returned to stronger growth in 2023 and 2024, with the company upgrading its 2024 guidance to around 9–10% organic revenue growth, compared with earlier expectations of high single-digit expansion.[5] By late 2024 the share price had risen above €30 and the market capitalisation reached roughly €13.6 billion, around 30% higher than at the start of the year.[5] These results, combined with the company’s admission to the CAC 40 and a governance structure pairing Gharbi as CEO with Laurent Mignon of Wendel as chairman, led analysts to speak of a restored “growth dynamic” and renewed investor interest in the testing and certification sector.[3][5]
Compensation, wealth and external roles
💶 CEO remuneration. As chief executive of Bureau Veritas, Gharbi receives a compensation package typical for leaders of similarly sized French listed companies, with total remuneration for 2023 reported at around €4 million, including a fixed salary of about €900,000, annual bonus and long-term incentives such as performance shares.[9] Comparative analyses place her roughly in the middle of the pay distribution for CAC 40 chief executives, below the highest-paid incumbents whose packages can reach several times that level in a given year.[9]
💼 Accumulated wealth. Gharbi’s personal wealth also reflects the stock-based compensation she earned during her long tenure at Schlumberger, where executive pay is heavily weighted towards equity awards. In 2021, her final full year as an executive vice-president, she received an estimated US$6.8 million in total compensation, including salary, bonus and share-based incentives.[10] One analysis of United States securities filings estimated her net worth at around US$18 million by late 2024, largely reflecting the value of Schlumberger shares she held or had realised.[11]
🏛️ Board and association roles. Beyond her executive responsibilities, Gharbi has held a limited number of external mandates. At Rio Tinto she served as an independent non-executive director from 2020, with the company highlighting the “international expertise” she brought from her work in energy and technology, before stepping down in 2023 after being appointed to lead Bureau Veritas, in order to avoid any perception of conflicts of interest with its global inspection activities.[8][3] In France she has joined influential business circles, including the Le Siècle club and employer federations such as Medef and Afep, reflecting her growing involvement in national economic debates after years spent abroad.[3] She also participates in cross-industry mentoring initiatives like Equileap, aimed at supporting women executives, which aligns with her stated commitment to diversity and ethical governance.[3][7]
Leadership style and management approach
🧠 Analytical leadership. Commentators frequently trace Gharbi’s leadership style to her engineering background, noting her preference for data, rigorous analysis and clear objectives over rhetorical flourish.[7][3] She has been described as detail-oriented yet not a micromanager, setting ambitious but precise targets and then delegating authority to teams while monitoring performance through a limited number of key indicators.[3] In a podcast interview she highlighted learning, listening and clarity of purpose as core elements in leading complex international organisations.[7]
🤝 People and culture. Her period in charge of human resources at Schlumberger gave Gharbi experience in organisational design and culture-building, which she has since applied in both operational and boardroom roles.[3][2] At Bureau Veritas she has refreshed the executive committee, brought in a chief digital officer from outside the traditional testing and inspection industry and emphasised internal mobility and development, echoing the rotation-based talent management practices she experienced earlier in her career.[3] Former colleagues note that she tends to combine high expectations with a willingness to take calculated risks on promising individuals, a trait she has framed as essential for innovation and succession planning.[7]
🌱 Diversity and ESG focus. While Gharbi rarely presents herself as an activist CEO, she has consistently linked her own advancement to corporate policies encouraging diversity and international mobility, particularly at Schlumberger, and has stated that she aims to foster an equally inclusive culture at Bureau Veritas.[3][7] Under her leadership the company has expanded services in areas such as renewable energy certification, low-carbon infrastructure and responsible supply-chain audits, positioning its portfolio to benefit from long-term environmental, social and governance trends while aligning with its historic role in risk management and safety assurance.[3][5]
Controversies and challenges
⚖️ SGS merger talks and Wendel stake sale. Gharbi’s tenure at Bureau Veritas has so far been largely free of personal controversy, but she has had to navigate sensitive strategic episodes. In January 2025 news leaked that preliminary merger discussions were under way between Bureau Veritas and Swiss competitor SGS, prompting concerns in France that a long-standing national champion might come under foreign control.[3] The talks, reportedly encouraged by some shareholders, ended within weeks without agreement, after which Gharbi reaffirmed the company’s independent Leap 28 strategy.[3] Around the same time the reference shareholder Wendel sold a 6.7% block of shares, reducing its stake to about 26.5% of the capital and around 41% of voting rights, a move interpreted as portfolio rebalancing rather than a loss of confidence but one that added to market scrutiny of the group’s ownership structure.[5]
🌍 Establishing legitimacy in France. As a Tunisian-born, Australian-naturalised engineer who built most of her career abroad, Gharbi initially faced questions about her fit at the head of a historic French institution whose revenue nevertheless comes overwhelmingly from outside France.[3] She has gradually consolidated her domestic standing by delivering financial results, building relationships with policymakers and business leaders and appearing at high-profile events such as the Rencontres économiques d’Aix-en-Provence, while maintaining a relatively low media profile compared with some peers.[6][3] By the mid-2020s, commentators in the French press generally treated her position as firmly established.[3]
♻️ Oil-industry background and governance. Some observers initially questioned whether a former oilfield services executive was an appropriate choice to lead a company increasingly involved in sustainability audits and climate-related certification.[3] Gharbi has responded by steering Bureau Veritas further into low-carbon and ESG-linked services and stressing that her experience with complex industrial risks in the oil and gas sector equips her to address environmental and safety challenges with technical rigour.[3][5] Her decision to give up the Rio Tinto directorship upon taking the Bureau Veritas job, despite its prestige, has been cited as an example of her cautious approach to conflicts of interest and corporate governance.[8][3]
Personal life
🏠 Family and residences. Gharbi is married to an Australian citizen and acquired Australian nationality through the marriage; the couple have two children.[3][2] During her years as a globe-trotting Schlumberger executive the family’s base was largely in London, where her children have grown up, and when she accepted the offer to lead Bureau Veritas she relocated to Paris while maintaining close ties to London for family reasons.[3]
🙇 Personality and public image. Journalistic profiles have described Gharbi as “discreet and determined”, portraying a leader who tends to speak softly and concisely in meetings while projecting firm authority.[3] She is said to avoid personal publicity; for instance, she declined to attend a high-profile management award ceremony in late 2024, arguing that it was too early in her tenure for such honours, a gesture interpreted as consistent with her reserved nature.[3]
📚 Intellectual interests and mentoring. Away from work, Gharbi has indicated that she favours quiet, intellectually oriented pursuits over visible hobbies and continues to take an interest in new technologies and engineering-driven solutions, stating that her “love for science and technology” has been one of the keys to her professional journey.[3][7] She serves as a mentor in programmes aimed at women in science and executive roles, and her trajectory from modest beginnings in Tunisia to the helm of a CAC 40 company has made her a reference figure for younger professionals with similar backgrounds.[3][7]
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References
- ↑ "Bureau Veritas : Hinda Gharbi, nouvelle voix du leadership féminin dans le CAC 40". Challenges.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 "Hinda Gharbi". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25 3.26 3.27 3.28 3.29 3.30 3.31 3.32 3.33 3.34 3.35 3.36 3.37 3.38 3.39 3.40 3.41 3.42 3.43 "Bureau Veritas : Hinda Gharbi, nouvelle voix du leadership féminin dans le CAC 40". Challenges. 27 April 2025. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Pas-à-pas, Hinda Gharbi prend les commandes de Bureau Veritas, leader mondial de la certification". Leaders. 19 August 2022. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 "Bureau Veritas promu dans le CAC 40". Boursorama. 18 December 2024. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 "Hinda Gharbi – Speaker biography". Les Rencontres Économiques d'Aix-en-Provence. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 "Risk-Taking and Continuous Learning: The Path to Executive Leadership with Hinda Gharbi, CEO of Bureau Veritas". Flipping the Barrel. 25 June 2023. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Rio Tinto board changes – Hinda Gharbi appointment". Rio Tinto. 21 February 2020. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Bureau Veritas SA – Management & Compensation Analysis". Simply Wall St. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ "Hinda Gharbi – Schlumberger Ltd Executive Compensation (2021)". ERI Economic Research Institute. Retrieved 2025-11-20.
- ↑ "Hinda Gharbi Net Worth – Insider Trades and Bio". Benzinga. Retrieved 2025-11-20.