Accor: Please Call Housekeeping | businessweek.com
The hotel chain's messy CEO search may have an unlikely result: Better governance. Accor, Europe's biggest hotel chain, has lots of experience washing its guests' linens. But now the Paris company must clean up its own sullied reputation after its search for a new boss led to a rare public airing of a messy boardroom battle. A truce was reached in mid-October, when Gilles Pélisson, a nephew of Accor co-founder Gérard Pélisson, was named CEO. As part of the deal, the elder Pélisson agreed to yield the post of chairman of the board to an outsider recruited by dissident board members.