ARCEP chairman, Jean-Ludovic Silicani, has appointed Benoit Loutrel as the Authority's Director-General - coming to replace Philippe Distler who was appointed to ARCEP's Executive board yesterday by the President of France. Benoit will take up his post in early March. The Authority's Deputy Director-General, François Lions, will perform his duties in the interim.
Benoit Loutrel (44) is a graduate of the École polytechnique, the École nationale de la statistique et de l'administration économique (ENSAE) and the Université de sciences sociales of Toulouse.
After working for the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, INSEE, from 1993 to 1996, Benoit became a technical advisor to the French representative on the Board of Directors of the World Bank in Washington from 1996 to 1998, and later chargé d'affaires and manager of the European office, in Paris, of the Infrastructures Department of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group (1999-2003). Benoit then joined ARCEP where he worked as the Deputy Director-General from 2007 to 2010. Since 2010, he has been Director of the "Digital Economy Development" programme for the Commissioner-General for Investment - a position which required him to work closely with local authorities and telecom carriers.