When I ask Patrick Ménard, the recently appointed head of Société Générale’s new media and telecommunications group, to describe his style of management, he drifts into football-speak. “These days,” he says, “you’ve really got to be a player coach.” Sounding a little more like a banker, he explains: “You’ve got to do deals yourself to be credible, both externally and internally, but you also need to be a manager. We are, after all, running a global business. And to manage people you must know what people are going through on a day-to-day basis.”
“I managed to stay one step removed. I think that’s important for a banker”
The footballing analogy comes on the heels of a discussion about Ménard’s passion for the game. He supports AC Milan and Manchester City (the latter affiliation was acquired while learning English and staying with a family who lived in Manchester’s Maine Road, a few doors away from the City ground).
Aside from his love of football, Ménard is a keen painter – his walls at home are covered with his abstract daubs – but he is the first to admit that he is above all a banker. What’s more, his father was a banker, his wife was working as a banker when they met, even his father-in-law worked in banking.
As the head of Paribas’ Los Angeles office between 1991 and 1994, Ménard was involved in lending to the producers of Hollywood films – he financed Quentin Tarantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs – but did his utmost not to get starry-eyed about the whole scene. “I made a conscious effort not to become too fascinated by the people,” he says. “I managed to stay one step removed. I think that’s important for a banker.”
Patrick Ménard was born in 1957 in the suburbs west of Paris. His Italian mother and French father had met while learning English in London. Neither spoke the other’s language, so they communicated in English at home while he was growing up. As a result, says Ménard, “I’ve always been very internationally minded”.
After school he did an MBA at ESSEC and then joined Crédit Lyonnais in Paris. In 1983 he moved to Citibank on the commercial banking side, working later in the London office. From there he transferred to Paribas in 1986, working as director of commercial banking in Paris and Milan, before moving to become director of the Los Angeles branch in 1991.
While in LA, besides financing films (for which his bank took distribution rather than box-office risk), Ménard also witnessed “the evolution of companies from pure media into media and telecommunication companies”. Having seen such a variety of American cable and broadcasting companies move into the telecom arena, when he returned to Paris as European head (later global head) of financing activities for the media and telecoms sector, he found it “easier to imagine what would happen here”.
Notable deals included lead arranger roles on the first One2One financing in the UK in 1994 and the privatization of France Télécom in 1995. He also worked extensively with US cable companies that were looking for European partners “with mixed results – but profitable from a banking perspective”.
Ménard was tempted to join Société Générale last autumn, six months after the BNP Paribas merger. “My objective,” he says, “was to do at SG what I’d been doing at Paribas, establish a global presence and offer a wide variety of products. It means having a wide client base, and doing more of what typical Anglo-Saxon banks do, more M&A work.” The downturn in market sentiment for the sector means it “obviously becomes more risky, and we’re becoming more picky. You’ve got to back only the best players but on the other hand, in this market, once you build a relationship, it’s a real relationship.”
