JULY 2, 2004

Keep an eye on Darbelnet

The man who is tipped as possible long-term replacement for Max Mosley is America's Robert Darbelnet, the president and chief executive officer of the American Automobile Association (AAA), a club which has 42m members in the United States. He was elected president of the FIA's sister organization the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme (AIT) in 2001. He was for a period the Deputy President of the FIA (Touring and Automobile).

Darbelnet is a professional automobile club politician, having started his career with the Quebec Automobile Club in 1973. He worked as a teacher until he became Assistant Director-General of the QAC in 1981 and in 1983 coordinated the merger between the Quebec Automobile Club and Montreal Automobile Club and was named Director General and CEO of the consolidated organisation, known as the CAA-Quebec. He continued in that role until 1990 when he became the president and the CEO of the AAA in 1990.

Born in Portland, Maine in December 1951 he is a citizen of both the USA and Canada and has a degree in law from Laval University. In addition to his other roles Darbelnet is on the board of the National Tourism Organisation, the National Petroleum Council, ITS America, Alliance Forest Products Inc. and the Ontario Corp.

While Darbelnet is being seen as a likely candidate for the autumn of 2005, the most popular name for the one-year job of interim president appears to be Michel Boeri or the Automobile Club de Monaco.