When Sir Lindsay was first hired by LOréal – then almost entirely focused on western Europe – the company was thinking about international expansion. “For the first 15 years of my career I was basically out in various countries [including Belgium, Italy and the US] struggling to build our brand and our presence in those countries. So when I got the job as chief executive it came totally naturally to me that my priority was going to be to write LOréal in the sky of every country in the world.”

　　Under Sir Lindsays leadership, LOréal did just that. Annual sales rose from a few billion euros to more than 17bn as the company acquired foreign cosmetic groups such as Shu Uemura in Japan, Kiehls in the US, and the Body Shop in Britain.

　　Sir Lindsay harboured international ambitions even as a child in Wallasey, on the Cheshire coast in England. “My mother always had dreams which my very down-to-earth father never quite realised – salt of the earth but definitely a quiet man.

　　“And my mother dreamed of parties at Monte Carlo and the bright lights. She transmitted to me the idea that excitement and fun was being international and travelling and speaking languages. It was easy as a teenager in a slightly grim 1950s Britain to see the cars going into Monte Carlo and to say, ‘Wow, one day Im going to be there.”

　　Today he seems to be living the life he coveted. His office has a view of the Eiffel Tower and on the shelves are photos of large sailing boats, mementoes of his valued leisure activities. While running LOréal (“an all-consuming, stressful, exhausting thing”), he relaxed by sailing and skiing. “When youre skiing really hard all day, youve got to concentrate on skiing if you dont want to break something. And during that time you recuperate.”

　　Most of his life has been devoted to business. He has been a board member of LAir Liquide, the French gas group, and Galderma Phama, a pharmaceuticals joint venture between LOréal and Nestlé. This month he will receive a lifetime achievement award at the European Business Leaders Awards in London.

　　Now that he is chairman, a job he intends to hold for one four-year term only, he is pursuing “a more balanced and cultural life”. He goes to orchestral concerts and reads. (He declines to say what: “Its very private and I dont intend to tell anybody.”)

　　Making a career as a Brit at a French company “was never an issue” he says, although: “They liked it better when they discovered, mistakenly as it turned out, that I was Welsh.” (Although his surname sounds Welsh, his parents were English.)

　　“It probably helped me right from the beginning because I stood out. ‘Who is this English guy who doesnt have the French manners to hide his thoughts from the chairman? I was probably a bit more blunt about things than they were.”

　　He believes, too, that one of the reasons LOréal has become a “really international company” is that it was run by a foreigner between 1988 and 2006.

　　“I could be a bridge between this intensely proud and performing French company and the rest of the world, who dont always get on with proud and performing French people.”

　　One of the most “magical” experiences while running LOréal, he says, was seeing Chinas transition from “the Mao uniform to miniskirts” in only a few years. He recalls the challenge of launching LOréal in China in the mid-1990s when he used to “pace the streets at night of Shanghai” pondering an appropriate marketing campaign for the country.

　　“We decided that we would light up the largest sign in China in the sky saying ‘LOréal – Because Youre Worth It. It was a highly incredible claim that people didnt even totally understand – the idea of individual worth in communist China. Then seeing it blossom ...I will feel something very special for the city of Shanghai.”

　　The value of rewriting company history

　　Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones has presided over a period of steady global expansion at LOréal without any significant hiccups, such as accounting scandals, mass sackings or extensive corporate restructuring. He claims his secret is “preaching continuity”.

　　“Any major new thing we were doing I would start by saying: ‘There is a historical precedent for this. Back in 1956 everybody knows LOréal did this and then did that.” When occasionally there was no precedent, he admits he invented one to help people “see that there was a perspective”.

　　He describes this process as a culture of permanent mini-restructuring. “I dont think there has ever been a major restructuring charge in the whole of LOréals corporate history...but there have been hundreds of little ones. What we do is try to live a life of permanent small change to avoid the major disasters...It doesnt mean we havent closed factories – we have – but we run them down very gently and then weve done everything we can to find jobs for the people.”