"Paris is very chatty," says Philippe Citerne, the vice-chairman of Accor, Europe's biggest hotel group. Fearing that its secret might not last, on November 3rd Accor's board rushed out the news that Gilles Pelisson, the chairman and chief executive, would be replaced by Denis Hen-nequin, the boss of McDonald's in Europe. The board was anxious to avoid another fiasco like the one over Mr Pelisson's appointment in 2005, when its announcement that it was removing his predecessor, Jean-Marc Espalioux, was preceded by destabilising leaks. Adding to the strife back then was the fact that Mr Pelisson is the nephew and heir of Gerard Pelisson, one of Accor's founders. This inevitably prompted questions over whether he had won the job purely on merit.
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