FORMER Credit Suisse boss, Tidjane Thiam is to run for president in Ivory Coast’s forthcoming election, his party has confirmed.
Thiam, 62, was the only candidate vying to represent the country’s main opposition party, the PDCI.
Thiam has spent the last two decades living abroad, and had to give up his French citizenship to be able to stand in the presidential election.
The former minister has held senior positions in leading international businesses like Aviva, Prudential and Credit Suisse, though he resigned from the latter following a spying scandal.
Political scientist Geoffroy Kouao told the AFP news agency that Thiam was not “well known to Ivorians,” after spending more than 20 years out of the country pursuing his business career, and so would have to run a strong campaign in order to win October’s election.
The governing RHDP party has not yet announced its candidate, but the current president, 83-year-old Alassane Ouattara, is likely to run for what would be a fourth term in office.
Three other prominent figures, including former President Laurent Gbagbo, have been barred from running.
Thiam has had something of a chequered professional life.
After becoming the first Ivorian to pass the entrance exam to France’s prestigious Polytechnique engineering school, he returned to Ivory Coast and took up politics.
In 1998, aged 36, he became planning minister before the PDCI was ousted from power in a coup the following year.
He then moved abroad and pursued a largely successful business career.
In 2009, he became the first black person to head a company on the UK’s FTSE 100 stock exchange when he was named CEO of the Prudential insurance company.
However, he was later censured by a financial regulator for not being open about a planned takeover.
After five years as the head of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, he was forced to resign in 2020 over a spying scandal, although he has been cleared of any involvement.
He is well connected in West African political circles – he is the great-nephew of Ivory Coast’s first President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, while his uncle Habib Thiam was a prime minister in Senegal, on two occasions, spanning a total of nine years.
However, Thiam faces a legal challenge to his candidacy because he had taken up French nationality.
The courts are expected to rule on this next Thursday.