Edouard Michelin, 42; Ran Family’s Tire Firm

Edouard Michelin, a co-managing partner of the French tire company that bears his family name, drowned Friday in a boating accident, officials said. He was 42.

Michelin, who had headed the company since 1999, had been on a fishing boat that sank near the Ile de Sein off the western coast of Brittany, a company statement said. Circumstances surrounding the accident were not clear, and an investigation was underway, the company said.

The company announced that its other managing partner, Michel Rollier, would run the firm that employs 130,000 people worldwide -- 30,000 of them in France.

A great-grandson and namesake of Edouard Michelin, who along with his brother Andre founded the company in 1889, Edouard was born Aug. 13, 1963, in Clermont-Ferrand in France’s Auvergne region. The youngest of four sons, he was the one viewed to be management material by his father, Francois, who ran the company more than 40 years before his retirement in 1999.

After studying engineering and earning his bachelor’s degree at the Ecole Centrale in Paris in 1985, Edouard started working in the family business making tires on the assembly line.

He gained hands-on experience in the company’s research, production and sales divisions before being drafted into the French navy, where he served as an officer aboard a nuclear submarine.

After returning to civilian life, he was quickly appointed chief executive of Michelin’s North American operations, based in Greenville, S.C. He returned to France three years later and was named a managing partner. He was named president in June 1999 on the retirement of his father.

Edouard quickly became a controversial successor by announcing plans to eliminate 10% of the firm’s European workforce as the company posted a big jump in earnings.

Operating profits rose steadily over the next few years as Michelin -- a company also known for its restaurant guides and maps -- trimmed overhead, boosted margins and developed various marketing strategies throughout the world.

Concerned with the environment and the future of vehicles using his firm’s tires, Edouard Michelin was an avid supporter of the development of clean, fuel-efficient cars.

For the company’s 100th birthday, he had sponsored the Challenge Bibendum (named for the rotund Michelin man mascot), an annual competition that tests cars using alternative automotive technologies.

“The challenge is to adapt and reconcile our demands for a fast, enduring, comfortable and affordable transportation with the new demands for cleaner, quieter cities and the transportation that will be as sustainable in the emerging countries of the world as it is in the industrialized nations,” he said in 2001, when the three-day competition came to the Southland and was held in Fontana.

Considered a quiet family man who shunned the spotlight, Michelin was not known for an ostentatious lifestyle. In 2003, his net worth was estimated at $1.6 billion.

He is survived by his wife and six children.