Axa boss Henri de Castries on coal: 'Do you really want to be the last investor?'

Head of giant insurer, and chair of the shadowy Bilderberg group, talks about selling off fossil fuel investments, China's stock market crash and Brexit

Henri de Castries might just be the most powerful man in the world. He is chief executive and chairman of one of the world's biggest insurers, Axa, and a member of France's illustrious noble house of Castries. But De Castries is also chairman of the Bilderberg group, a collection of political and business leaders from Europe and North America that meets in private every year to debate "megatrends and major issues facing the world" - or which is secretly running the world if you are a conspiracy theorist.

With this in mind, De Castries's penchant for making dramatic comparisons is worth taking seriously. The charismatic Axa boss compares investing in fossil fuels to investing in asbestos-related companies in the 50s or 60s, the rise of the internet to the advent of electricity at the end of the 19th century and, perhaps most alarmingly, the recent fall in Chinese share prices with the Wall Street Crash of 1929.