Tidjane Thiam an executive director, sitting on the plc board. In January 2007, after Richard Harvey announced he would step down as chief executive of Aviva, Thiam was tipped as a possible future head of the group. Thiam left Aviva in September 2007 to become chief financial officer of Prudential plc. In March 2009, Thiam was named chief executive, effective from October, after Mark Tucker chose to step down. The appointment made him the first African to lead a FTSE 100 listed company. His departure from the role was announced on 10 March 2015. After he became chief executive, Prudential launched a
FTSE 350 Index FTSE 350 Index The FTSE 350 Index index is a market capitalization weighted stock market index incorporating the largest 350 companies by capitalization which have their primary listing on the London Stock Exchange. It is a combination of the FTSE 100 Index of the largest 100 companies and the FTSE 250 Index of the next largest 250. The index is maintained by FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group. See the articles about those indices for lists of the constituents of the FTSE 350. The FTSE 350 is not very widely followed. The terms "FTSE 350" or