When Patrick Pouyanne took over as the head of Total's loss-making refinery division in 2011, he demanded a breakdown of costs for every single unit.
He was told such details didn't exist. Frustrated, he sent his lieutenants to produce numbers showing which units of the French oil major were performing well and which needed urgent cost cuts to stop hemorrhaging profit.
Brutal cost-cutting became Pouyanne's trademark and has served him well ever since - he turned around the refining unit, more than doubling net income in just three years. Today Pouyanne, who took over as Total's chief executive in 2014, is emerging from the worst oil price slump in a generation with his firm making more money than any of its peers except its much larger rival, US oil giant ExxonMobil.
Pouyanne's relentless fight to cut costs has earned him respect from investors who want to see strong results in a poor market while pressing him for future growth plans. "We are happy with Total's progression. Lower cash flow breakeven is a good thing and it is good to see they are progressing with new project development and defending future growth," said Jonathan Waghorn, fund manager at London-based Guinness Asset Management, which holds shares in Total.
Pouyanne, 53, was propelled to the helm of France's top listed firm after his predecessor, Christophe de Margerie, died in a plane crash in Moscow.
De Margerie, a bon vivant with connections to the French aristocracy and political elite, was widely seen as an ideal chief for the boom times as he won huge projects with big budgets.
But as oil prices collapsed soon after Pouyanne took over, the rugby-loving giant - he is 1.91-metre (six foot three inches) tall - was forced quietly to abandon de Margerie's "high-risk, high-reward" exploration strategy, in which the firm had poured $10bn in a fruitless effort to find new reserves.
For Jason Kenney, an equity analyst at Santander, Pouyanne's big achievement was to bring about a quick change of course at Total while preserving de Margerie's good relations with many nations.
"Pouyanne has built on these foundations but has brought a prudent commercial sense to the business that has helped see it through two very tough years - and strengthened Total to make it more 'future proof' than peers - with a differentiated growth and profitability outlook," Kenney said. A key distinction between Total and its peers became evident last week when it reported $8.2bn in adjusted net income for 2016 - almost on a par with Exxon, a company producing twice as much oil and gas as Total. The figure came well ahead of much larger peers Shell and Chevron, which reported $7.2bn and $1.8bn respectively. Total also became the only major oil firm to raise its dividend over the past year.
