Frédéric Oudéa, CEO of Société Générale: Nickel<

From the shadow to the light. Passing the RTL-LCI-Le Figaro Grand Jury on December 2 after participating in Le Monde d'après on France 3, Frédéric Oudéa, CEO of Société Générale, crossed the Rubicon. Few bosses, even fewer bankers, risk themselves in this type of public broadcast. At 49, Daniel Bouton's successor has decided to get out of the woods to teach about banks and the economy.

This accessible but reserved man, polytechnician and finance inspector, has so far made a flawless run. "Frédéric Oudéa? He's a good comrade, well in his head, easy to live with, I don't think I've seen him annoyed one day", confides Pierre Mariani, ex-boss of Dexia. "Making your portrait amounts to exploiting the roughness of a smooth object", warns one of his former companions from the ENA.

“More physical than cerebral”

Damn, would we be dealing with Mr. Perfect? "It is at least in its gestures, judge Stephen Bunard, synergologist, who intervenes at the ENA and at the Paris-Dauphine University, and observed the performance of Frédéric Oudéa at the Grand Jury. The gestures, from dominant, are perfectly in line with the speech. He's controlled, but he's not a cold monster." Of average height, stocky, powerful chest... We think that there is perhaps something to look for on the side of sport. "I am more physical than cerebral", surprisingly admits the banker, passionate about football. "Our regular vacations on the beaches of La Baule-les-Pins, very quiet at the time, gave rise to wild parties, says Jean-Baptiste Oudéa, his younger brother, living in Singapore. It was there that he developed a taste for this sport and where he made his mark as captain very early on." At the time, his family - a gastroenterologist father, a researcher mother at Inserm, then at the National AIDS Research Agency - settled in Nantes and spent their weekends in La Baule.

Later, in the 1990s, we find Frédéric Oudéa playmaker of the football team of former ENA. "He was often captain, remembers Guillaume Cerutti, president of Sotheby's France. He was not expansive but his slaughter and his self-sacrifice made him very loved, very respected." Frédéric Oudéa played once or twice a week until 1997, when he injured his knee and had to fall back on tennis. A sport he practices with his wife, former champion Amélie Castera (Essec, ENA), marketing director at Axa. "What's good is that I can play with her without holding my shots," he laughs. As for football, Frédéric Oudéa still practices it at least once a year with the Finance Inspectorate team. History of beating the Court of Auditors...

So here is a financier who does not play golf. Neither rugby, a sport long associated with Société Générale. Boss of the CAC 40, he doesn't even go to the Opera! "On the other hand, I really like the Salle Pleyel", he almost apologizes. He also sponsors the classical music festival Moments musicaux in Gerberoy, the Picardy village where the family home is located. "It is very simple, in the healthiest and friendliest sense of the word, explains Nicolas Dautricourt, renowned violinist, who organizes the arrival of artists at the festival. I only need that: someone attentive that supports our action."

The tear of the sphinx

Far from the music that softens morals, Frédéric Oudéa was propelled to the controls of Société Générale in noise and fury. He was financial director when, at the beginning of 2008, the Kerviel affair broke out, eliminating Jean-Pierre Mustier, his most serious competitor in the organization chart. In May 2008, he was appointed Managing Director. When the decision is announced to the group's management committee, Frédéric Oudéa cannot hold back a tear. This is the only time he will let an emotion show through. We understand that Société Générale, which had also invested heavily in subprime mortgages, was then on the brink of collapse. A year later, he was appointed CEO, while Daniel Bouton, his mentor, had to resign. In the summer of 2011, a violent stock market attack brought the bank back to the ground...

These years of perilous navigation undoubtedly counted triple for this courageous man - he grew a little fat and lost his hair a little - who remained calm as the typhoon slammed into the ship. Impassive in the turmoil, Frédéric Oudéa is also on calmer waters, so much so that the employees of Société Générale find it difficult to recognize themselves in this boss whom they describe as a "sphinx" as it is difficult to know what he really thinks. Since he expressed, on November 15 at the interviews of the Autorité des marchés financiers, his fear that French banks will soon be similar to "ducks with severed heads", he has inherited a new nickname internally: some facetious nicknamed him Lecanard.com, accusing him of being too much in communication.

His other nickname, Hugo Boss, refers to the always perfect look of Frédéric Oudéa, well placed in a recent world ranking of "sexy managers". "I am surprised that this information published on the Internet has caused so much buzz", says the CEO, not really unhappy with the thing... Sexy? In any case, he wears Ermenegildo Zegna suits, the only ones whose cut suits his stature. "But I'm not at all trendy, he adds immediately. I still have things from fifteen years ago, in particular shirts bought when I was in London."

How to Make a Coconut Shell Hanging Basket http://t.co/kSv8hIvpLj

— DIY or Die Trying Mon Aug 26 13:03:23 +0000 2013

"Neither hard nor insensitive"

It would take more than nicknames to disturb the stainless boss of Société Générale who has the easy familiarity, but remains a block of granite. "I am neither hard nor insensitive, but I do not overplay in the register of emotion, he ends up recognizing. I am in respect, and I do not have an oversized ego." He even makes an effort to appear sympathetic. Every three months, he organizes a dinner for the 55 members of the management committee. New entrants must sing a song of their choice. "It puts a good atmosphere," says Frédéric Oudéa. He himself can then push the song - he almost participated in one of the three choirs of the Société Générale. Very 1980s, he likes Jean-Jacques Goldman and Michel Berger, in particular Le Paradis blanc. A regressive song where Berger dreams of a universe "as before, as in my childhood dreams".

Those of young Frédéric Oudéa were brutally darkened by the death of his father in 1976, followed by other family deaths. He was then 13 years old and two brothers younger than him. "The Christmases of our early childhood often corresponded to the mourning of a parent of a rather small family, forcing us to put many things back at their fair value", recalls Jean-Baptiste Oudéa. It was then that the eldest of the siblings, no doubt having become an adult too early, shielded himself. He acquires the absolute conviction of the fragility of existence and develops the imperious feeling that one must concentrate on the essential and neglect the futilities. Do not waste a second of a life that can be short and devote all your energy to one goal: "Make the most of each day". "He's like that in the morning, it can be tiring," admits one of his relatives.

Stress resistant

Frédéric Oudéa ignores the crossroads, passes his baccalaureate at 16, finds himself a polytechnician and finance inspector at 24. In the maternal model - his mother, a widow, raised her three sons alone while pursuing her career as a researcher -, he certainly drew his energy and his ability to resist stress. In 1993, he joined the team of Pierre Mariani, then chief of staff to a young budget minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. There, he is in charge of Social, European and Agricultural Affairs. Which earned him the award... of Agricultural Merit!

Frédéric Oudéa remembers another contact with the peasant world. “I did my military service in the nuclear artillery,” he recalls. had to talk to the farmers to ask them to make a field available." No epic story of a nocturnal pursuit of the young polytechnician by a peasant armed with a pitchfork will follow: "I received a very good welcome", affirms the one for whom, in principle, life is good.

It was in 1995 that Frédéric Oudéa met his true destiny: he was spotted by Daniel Bouton and joined Société Générale, where he was formatted as one of the high potentials likely to lead the establishment one day. Sent to London, where his passion for football helped him "socialise", he returned to Paris as head of the supervision and development of the equity department. "After the crash of Internet stocks in 2000-2001, I was asked to strengthen my management team, recalls Vincent Taupin, then head of the Fimatex subsidiary, today president of Alma Consulting Group. I wanted recover Frédéric Oudéa. I was made to understand that he was destined for another destiny."

In 2003, Oudéa was appointed group financial director. Too high, too fast? "He should have only stayed a year or two in this position, then be appointed boss of the France network, judges a former administrator of the group. He would then have acquired a very strong legitimacy." A finance inspector assigned to retail banking? Probably unthinkable for Daniel Bouton...

If the infantrymen of the network do not recognize themselves in this meteoric journey, others also reproach their general for having chosen his close guard badly. Having bombarded outside personalities - in particular Bernardo Sanchez Incera, who came from Monoprix - within the executive committee without seeking to enhance internal resources creates a certain uneasiness. "In Paris, it is rumored that he is not surrounded well enough, that he does not have enough heavyweights around him", indicates the same administrator. "I assume this managerial choice, it is necessary to promote diversity, to make the organization breathe, retorts Frédéric Oudéa. An international bank whose executive committee does not include women or foreigners would not seem to me to be properly managed." This desire for openness does not go so far as to recruit autodidacts: of the twelve members of the executive committee, five are polytechnicians, and seven have gone through Science-Po or ENA. "Apart from Jean-François Sammarcelli, no one knows how to fill out a credit file", mocks a branch manager.

"Employees can be critical, retorts Alain Minc, but at least they are alive!" They even went on strike on January 8. Societe Generale is still there, while the European competitors supposed to devour it raw are dead or in poor condition. Except BNP Paribas, the eternal rival, and Banco Santander. "I have only one objective: to get Société Générale out of this very difficult period," says Frédéric Oudéa. Methodical, hard-working and organized, he got his bank through the crisis. And now? Managing 130,000 employees and restoring pride to this traumatized and nostalgic social body is his new challenge. And this time, he has time.