Vive la difference!
Michel Pebereau, chairman of BNP Paribas, is going to represent the French government on the board of EADS. One of his colleagues describes him in today's FT as being the "best of the French elite." He is certainly aware of elitism. I was working at Paribas when it merged with BNP and M.Pebereau came over from Paris to soothe our nerves about the impending merger. He made the following remark, "Many people at BNP regard the people at Paribas as being a load of intellectual snobs, while many at Paribas regard people at BNP as a bunch of baguette-wielding peasants, nevertheless, this merger is going to be a tremendous success!" In fact, he was right. Within 3 months the majority of the Paribas employees had resigned but today BNP Paribas is France's most profitable bank.
posted by Whispering Walls at 9:42 am
9 Comments:
Oh Winchester ! This reminds me of the merger of Lloyds and TSB. [Not quite the rarefied circles of the City, but there we go]
Gordon Pell, one of the Head Honchos there at the time, referred to it more subtly as 'alpha and omega' in terms of culture'.
It is fair to say that most of the TSB 'northerners' saw Lloyds as being a bunch of 'G&T sipping southern softies'.
Lloyds people in the South [many of whom, it has to be said have never ventured further north than Watford, let alone Watford Gap] saw the 'northern' invasion as being composed of chippy, blunt, working class worker ants.
As a Welshman I never cease to be amazed at the English [and I use this word carefully] obsession with class, background, accent and so on.
I wonder if 'kinglear' has contacts within Bank of Scotland or the old 'Royal Bank of Scotland' who have similar tales to tell from their mergers with Halifax and NatWest?
Winchester, you may also want to pass comment on how many of these 'mega-mergers' actually work ? My information is that it is only a minority, and there are many and varied reasons for this failure.
RBS and Natwest was actually a takeover - Natwest had been up the creek since the 1975 secondary banking crisis. So RBS imposed their discipline and hey presto. But they didn't get rid of many people, and both banks had always focused on business rather than private accounts.
Halifax BOS is, I suspect, rather different. A friend of mine used to play tennis every week with Bruce Patullo of BOS. His comments about the merger are unprintable.
But regarding class.Yes the Engies are a bit obsessed with it, but largely because historically that was the way England was structured. The famous TWTWTW " I look down on him.." sketch actually sums it up perfectly. Unless unless... In fact, it is terribly useful to know what you are striving for. Until the present government, social mobility in UK was pretty good, and people did aspire to move up in class. Now of course NuLabour has done away with people's ability to get a decent education ( noone must fail - bolloks) which means the strata in society are pretty fixed.The one drawback we have is the envy and jealousy that seems to pervade our country ( viz the hunting ban). We are all only human, however rich. Live and let live I say ( except for Gordon Brown of course)
kinglear - I agree. Perversely, being 'behind the times' in Wales meant the ability to get a Grammar School education when it had been trashed in the rest of the country. Something that has unfortunately happening under both Labour and Tory governments for many a long year.
As regards the hunting 'ban', perhaps we could resurrect the 'Countryside Alliance' to save the endangered species in the House Of Lords. I whole-heartedly recommend you look at the Newsnight website for a catch-up with Lord Onslow being interviewed by Paxo. Priceless.
Without labouring the point too much, Lloyds and TSB made the mistake of 'analysis paralysis' over a number of things, not least the choice of IT system. Rather than put noses out of joint at a senior executive level, and dispense with one or other of the IT systems, they tried to cobble 'the best of both' into one upgraded IT system.
Integration took donkeys' years and they were stuck with a number of what are euphemistically known as 'legacy' [i.e. 'out of date'] systems.
Gordon Pell went to Nat West just before the RBS takeover, and was one of the few senior executives from that side kept on. The fact that he made sure the same errors weren't made there, and that a more decisive approach was required, goes a long way to explain their hugely improved share performance over the last 10 years.
Whether such an analogy can be applied to the 'single entity' of Boeing versus Anglo-French 'Airbus' co-operation is an argument I will leave for those more expert than myself in these matters..
p.s. Since I'm not married, neither am I going to get into a debate as to whether a wife should 'wear the trousers' and so save all the huge problems, effort and time a more democratic approach would cause..
I would just like to say how grateful I am for all your amusing comments on this blog - you really brighten my day! I have a question for my dear anonymous Welsh reader: why don't you write a blog?
A lovely thought, but since I am a man of leisure at the moment, blog commenting is only displacement activity from finding gainful employment. So I don't really have anything to write about. Now if I could just find an attractive, wealthy, exciting, interesting woman so that I could continue to be a man of leisure...Only teasing...
Wife in the North is getting £70,000 for her blog so you should start writing and forget a desk job!
Nice story! [So is the one developing in your comments section!] Why do you think the Paribas employees resigned?
The Paribas people resigned because the deal was in reality a takeover, not a merger, so all the top jobs went to the BNP employees and there was a knock-on effect.
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