Baudouin Prot, chairman of BNP Paribas has decided to step down. The decision comes nearly three months after the French bank agreed to plead guilty to violating U.S. sanctions and pay nearly $9 billion in fines. Prot is expected to leave office effective 1 December and will be succeeded by Jean Lemierre, a senior adviser assisting him. Prot was BNP Paribas’s CEO from 2003 until 2011, when he became chairman, and was in charge of the bank during much of the period in which U.S. authorities allege BNP Paribas violated U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran, Cuba and Sudan. Prot offered his resignation and was not pressured to step down, according to sources.
