| It has been a very productive summer for François Narmon. Not only has the chief executive of Crédit Communal de Belgique signed an agreement with Crédit Local de France to create a European banking powerhouse. Symbolically, the 62-year-old banker's second wife also gave birth to twins the month before the negotiations were concluded. Only six months before the July 9 signing, the athletically built Narmon had informed the six-person management board of his ambitious intentions to make Crédit Communal not just a Belgian but a world leader in lending to local authorities. Narmon, who was given the title of Baron two years ago, and is described by his colleagues and rivals as "a man of vision", has spent his entire career at Crédit Communal, has been in charge of it for 17 years and is viewed in Belgium as practically the embodiment of the bank. In fact, his grandfather was an abandoned baby who was found on the site of Crédit Communal's Boulevard Pachecho headquarters which at the time was a hospital. So the alliance in July of Belgium's second-biggest bank (by assets) and the twelfth-largest bank in France was seen as a very personal one, forged by Narmon and Crédit Local's chairman, Pierre Richard. |