david: right before you join akzo, you were working where? thomas: i worked for consulting.hen i went to the company and the second signature was the nda. then i went to zurich and switzerland and backtracked that to run the germany portion. david: you've been a ceo since 2016? the stock is up 20% since that time. -- 60%? thomas: today close to 31. david: market capitalization is up almost an equivalent amount? thomas: we have about $71 billion. david: france is a wonderful country with great companies. usually they are headed by people born in french. -- france. how did a german get to be the head of a french major company? thomas: you would have to ask my board of directors. the board it ran a process, they looked at external candidates and internal candidates. there were several internal candidates. over time the process took three years. they eliminated it. at the end of the day there were two left, one french person and me. the board looked at essentially three criteria, which was very much away from nationality. one was track record. the other one was, what is the valu