He will take charge of a 1,884-strong staff and 261 physicians across the three sites of Esch-sur-Alzette, Niederkorn and Dudelange, which treat more than 144,000 patients per year. He will also work on the development of the future Südspidol hospital.

Metz, who has a 40-year career in medicine, first joined the hospital in 1998 when he and colleagues set up a neurology service within the stroke unit.

A graduate of the Université Catholique de Louvain, where he was a student-researcher in neurophysiology from 1985 to 1990, he specialised in neurology; at the Clinique Saint-Pierre in Ottignies-LLN, the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc in Brussels, the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where he was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School from 1993-1994 and at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg. From 1996 to 1997, he completed a post-specialisation year in neurosonology (Echo-Doppler) at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne.

The transition period will be led by Daniel Cardao, who took over as acting chief executive officer as of 1 September, following the departure of Dr Hansjörg Reimer.