An X would have been better suited within the usual CEO pool, I think.
But of course he was chief of staff an important Minister before he was appointed CEO of Arianespace so you know...
Within this system Arianespace and the EU were never to be innovators and disruptors, and still aren't geared to catch up.
In a way, this is a bit Nokia vs Apple unfolding in the space sector.
Much that is wrong and has been wrong with France in the last 50 years can almost always be traced back to this ghastly institution.
The folks who graduate from ENA are wildly disconnected from reality, especially when it comes to the economy and technology.
They unfortunately are also a tight knit mafia that pretty much controls the country and are dragging it down into the abyss at a 100 mph.
When you don't operate with market pressure, there is no such thing as bad decision making.
At the time, ArianeGroup (particularly Stéphane Israël) shrugged it off as irrelevant; such a position has since been shown to be foolhardy - to the extent that the designs for Ariane 7 looks like a methane powered semi-clone of Falcon 9.
In practical terms, ArianeGroup lost an entire design cycle due to bad decision making. When the next Ariane is done it'll have to compete in a world with not just Falcon 9, but 2-4 of Starship (SpaceX), Neutron (Rocket Lab), Terran R (Relativity), and New Glenn (Blue Origin).