Independent Bank Director in Luxembourg

I am a non-executive director and member of the advisory board of Banque Raiffeisen. Raiffeisen is a cooperative bank: its profit remains with the bank instead of being distributed to shareholders, which builds sustainability into its DNA. I have honest admiration for Mr. Raiffeisen and his peers who fathered the cooperative model some 200 years ago.

I am also a non-executive director of BEMO Europe – Banque Privée, a Luxembourg-based private bank specialising in wealth management, discretionary portfolio management and tailored financing solutions. The bank serves an international clientele of entrepreneurs, families and institutional partners, with a strong focus on relationships, long-term value creation and prudent risk management.

I joined Banque Générale in 1995 and started in asset management. I then moved to the office of the secretary general, where I got to know all layers of the bank and learned corporate communication. From there I worked in asset-liability management before heading the corporate finance department.

Asset-liability management in particular taught me how a bank's balance sheet actually behaves. Interest rate, liquidity and funding questions are not abstractions to me, and this grounding still shapes the way I read a bank's risk reports and financial statements as a director today.

From 2001 to 2010 I was at Deloitte Luxembourg, joining as a director and appointed partner in 2002. I was in charge of corporate finance, providing M&A, capital raising, due diligence and financial modelling services, as well as strategic advice, to institutional and private clients from Luxembourg and abroad. Since 2011 I have continued to serve institutional clients through my own company, Value Associates.

Several of my most demanding assignments have involved banks. During the 2008 crisis, mandated by the interbank creditors of Kaupthing Bank Luxembourg, I provided evidence of several deficits in the initial restructuring plan for a €1bn loan portfolio, which led to a revised plan and an alternative buyer for the bank. I advised Cetrel, the card payment services cooperative owned by Luxembourg's universal banks and Post Luxembourg, in its sale process to a larger international player and its conversion to a limited liability company; Cetrel was ultimately acquired by Six Group.

For Banque Raiffeisen, I advised on the tender launched by Post Luxembourg for a banking partner for its financial services activity (CCP), which gave the bank access to around €1bn in client deposits. In a separate two-year project, I advised the bank on the complex restructuring of its cooperative network, whereby it absorbed its main shareholders, the Caisses Raiffeisen – preserving the cooperative spirit of the founders while saving costs and simplifying governance and regulation.

In the wider financial sector, I coordinated the due diligence that led to the first Luxembourg licence ever granted to a non-insurance shareholder, enabling a private equity fund managed by J.C. Flowers to acquire one of Luxembourg's largest life insurers.

On bank boards I have gathered experience in audit, risk and nomination committees. My approach in each of them is the same: prepare thoroughly, read the numbers behind the numbers, and think ahead about the consequences of a decision for the bank, its clients and its regulators.

Strategy is where I believe an independent director can add the most. I enjoy anticipating a variety of scenarios and defining responses to opportunities and adversities, and at micro-level I enjoy analysing and improving corporate processes. Combined with the ability to challenge business plans and valuations constructively, this allows me to ask the questions that management teams respect rather than resent.

Sitting on the boards of a cooperative bank and of a private bank is a useful reminder that there is no single model of good banking. A cooperative retains its profit and answers to its members; a private bank lives from long-term client relationships and prudent risk management. Both require a board that understands the business model it is supervising and holds it to its own stated values.

My banking mandates are one part of a broader portfolio described on my page as an independent director in Luxembourg, which also covers my investment fund board experience and my work with family holdings.