After receiving his degree in business management from the Ceram School of Business in Sophia-Antipolis in France in 1984, Mr Cohade took an MBA at Pennsylvania State University, where he graduated top of his class.

Since leaving his motherland in 1984, Mr Cohade has spent the rest of his life abroad, except for an 18-month stint at Groupe Danone. He is now president of the Asia-Pacific region for Goodyear Tire and Rubber.

After he took the job in October 2004, Mr Cohade decided to move his division from the company headquarters in Akron, Ohio, to Shanghai.

Each morning, from his office on the 32nd floor of the Centre, he surveys a landscape of gleaming skyscrapers set among pre-war homes with trees and gardens in the former French concession.

'In Akron, the management team was 80 per cent Caucasian and 20 per cent Asian. Now it is the reverse. We have attracted a new team with the expertise of Goodyear and executives from Asia.

'My boss sent me here to transform the division into a pan-Asian company and seize the opportunity of the explosive growth in the auto industry. Excluding the name of the car, the tyre is the only part of the vehicle that is branded.'

It is far from Barcelonnette, a medieval town in southeast France between the Alps and the Cote d'Azur where Mr Cohade was born on September 23, 1961.

The town is famous for sumptuous villas built by citizens who emigrated to Mexico in the 19th century and made their fortunes in textiles, banking and department stores and came back with their wealth.

His father is an engineer who set up his own business distributing and renting construction equipment, much of it imported from Japan and the US to France and southern Europe.

He received a classical education at Catholic schools in Lyons, where he learnt Latin, Greek, philosophy and mathematics. He wanted to go into archaeology but his father encouraged him to choose business.

The internship at Marubeni was his awakening. 'It was a shock. I realised that a French diploma was worth little abroad. Without an American MBA, it would be hard to do well outside France. I stayed in a dormitory for unmarried Marubeni staff and discovered international business and Japanese culture.

'My Japanese colleagues were most sympathetic. Devoted to the firm, they worked very long hours and they played as hard as they worked. I discovered the world of nightclubs and karaoke. My friendship with them continues today.'

The cost of an American MBA then was daunting for a French student but fortunately his Ceram school had an association with Penn State under which he was able to work part-time as a teaching assistant which helped cover costs.

'I graduated in 1985 top of my class and went to work for Eastman-Kodak. I wanted to work in the US and not in Europe.'

He started as a financial analyst and went on to hold senior management positions in the US, Singapore, Switzerland, Brazil and Mexico where he met some of the descendants of those who had emigrated from his hometown and owned one of the biggest department stores in Mexico City.

'From 1994, I was the director-general for Brazil. It was a complex, difficult country emerging from a currency crisis.'

In 1996, he was named general manager and corporate vice-president of worldwide consumer film. 'It was a fascinating assignment. It was a centre of profit for the company and we were under strong attack from our rivals - Fuji, Agfa and Konica. Eastman Kodak had historically lost one percentage point of the worldwide film market a year to Fuji. We turned it around and regained two points by 1999.'

Then from 1999 came two years as head of the Asia-Pacific region for consumer imaging based in Singapore and in 2001, the chairmanship of all the company's businesses in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Russia.

At the end of 2002 he decided to leave Eastman-Kodak and accept an appointment at Groupe Danone to run its global water and beverage division, based in Paris.

'I wanted a new challenge and a new industry and the chance to run a global business. It was also the chance for my two children, then 10 and 12, to put down more roots in France. Still, it was very hard to leave since I felt very close to our clients and my colleagues and before our projects were finished.'

He counts his 18 months at Danone as a success on two fronts and a failure on a third. 'We succeeded in gaining share in markets where we were under fierce attack from Coca-Cola which had entered the water business and we succeeded in improving margin increasing price and mix and by cutting costs. But I did not succeed in internationalising the company's business culture.

'It is a very successful and well managed firm, one of the most successful in France, but all the directors are French. Its culture is collegial, a matter of networks and relationship, making it hard for an outsider to understand. One day it must internationalise and change this culture to include Asia, Latin America, the US and the rest of Europe,' he said.

So in October 2004 he accepted a post with Goodyear as president of its Asia-Pacific region where the company ranks second outside Japan, behind Bridgestone.

Moving to Shanghai, he set up a new management team and started work towards a target set by his chief executive of sourcing at least 10 per cent of the company's global purchases from China by 2010, worth US$800 million. 'We are ahead of target and will achieve this before 2010.'

The company operates its own plant in Dalian which produces the Goodyear brand and exports half of its production to Europe and North America and sells the rest to the domestic market.

It is spending US$120 million to expand the Dalian plant due for completion by the end of this year. It purchases other Goodyear brands such as Blue Streak and Marathon from Chinese factories that manufacture them to its specifications.

With the growth of the private car in China, tyres are becoming a consumer product with the buying decisions increasingly made by women. In July last year, Goodyear launched service centres aimed at such consumers and since September has been opening two a day across the country. In China, it has 100 dealers and 1,600 sales outlets.

Mr Cohade paid tribute to his wife Agnes, a classmate at the Ceram business school, who has accompanied him during his global odyssey.

'She is a very important part of my life. She has followed me, uprooted herself and adapted herself to new countries and new cultures. This is difficult. The family becomes very important as a source of continuity.'

Biography

French-born Pierre Cohade received a degree in business management from Ceram School of Business in Sophia-Antipolis, France, at the age of 23.

Several months after finishing his MBA at Pennsylvania State University in 1985, he started work as a financial analyst with Eastman Kodak and went on to hold senior management positions for the company in Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Singapore and Switzerland, becoming the general manager and vice-president of worldwide consumer film in 1996.

Three years later, he became head of the Asia-Pacific region for consumer imaging, and in 2001, he was named chairman for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Russia.

Mr Cohade moved to Paris in 2003 to head the global water and beverage division of Groupe Danone. A year later, he joined Goodyear Tire and Rubber and was subsequently named president for the Asia-Pacific region.

To be close to the action, Mr Cohade, who speaks French, English, Portuguese and Spanish, moved from Goodyear's headquarters in Akron, Ohio, to Shanghai.

Mr Cohade and his wife, Agnes, have two children.