Claude Bébéar

Born on 29 July 1935 in Issac, Dordogne, Bébéar graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1955 and the Paris Institute of Actuaries, and was recruited in 1958 by André Sahut d'Izarn, who ran the Anciennes Mutuelles group in Rouen and was looking for a successor. He became chief executive in 1975 and chairman of the group in 1985, and turned a regional mutual into a global insurer. AXA announced his death at the age of 90 on November 4, 2025.

Claude Bébéar built modern AXA. After joining in 1958 he spent 17 years inside the business, including 1964 to 1966 in Canada creating the life insurance arm of the group subsidiary Provinces Unies, before becoming chief executive in 1975 following Sahut d'Izarn's death and the settlement of a strike that had paralysed the company in April 1974. The same year he created the reinsurer AMré, later AXA RE. In 1978 the Anciennes Mutuelles became Mutuelles Unies. He took control of the Drouot Group in 1982, bought Présence in April 1986, merged with Compagnie du Midi in 1988 to become France's second-largest insurer, and was elected Manager of the Year that year. In July 1991 AXA took control of The Equitable in the United States, in 1995 of National Mutual in Australia, and in 1996 of UAP, a company twice its size. Guardian Royal Exchange and Nippon Dantai followed in 1999. He chose the name AXA in 1985 and launched AXA Hearts in Action in 1990 to pool the group's philanthropy. When he handed the group to Henri de Castries in May 2000 AXA had 140,000 employees, 50 million customers and revenues of ~$90.4 billion (EUR 80 billion). He founded the Institut Montaigne and chaired it until 2015, and remained Honorary Chairman of AXA until his death. Claude Bébéar was born in 1935.