Tiger in the Bank

Two-thirds of the French banking industry dozes along under government ownership, and most private bankers are too timid to fight. The lone tiger is a bald dynamo of 66, Jean Reyre, president and director general of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. With at least a small stake in almost every big French industry, Reyre's "Paribas" spreads its investments across the world. They range from manganese ore in Gabon and gold in South Africa to factories in India and Russia.

Deals East & West. Combining the functions of commercial and investment bankers in the U.S., Reyre last year helped to float half of France's stock issues and 90% of its bond issues. Through branches and subsidiaries in New York, London, Geneva, Brussels, Amsterdam, Milan and Madrid, he shared the underwriting of 50 international securities issues. He helped Poland and Czechoslovakia to finance machinery buying in the West, formed a joint European subsidiary with the U.S.'s Bank of America, backed Monaco's Prince Rainier in his battle with Greek Shipowner Aristotle Onassis.

Late last year, Reyre even tried to take over Columbia Pictures Corp. by buying 37% of its stock in a swift and surprising $40 million raid. The U.S.'s Federal Communications Commission thwarted that move, but Paribas still expects to wind up with two seats on Columbia's board of directors. Last week Reyre reached across yet another border by announcing that Paribas has acquired a share in the West German business bank of S. J. Warburg. "He is very smart, very brave," says admiring Frank Manheim, a partner in Manhattan's Lehman Bros. "And he knows what he wants: to be the biggest banker in France."

After Napoleon. Reyre, a career banker who took charge of Paribas in 1948, has so far multiplied its assets tenfold, to $1 billion. A constant innovator, he was the first French banker to bring out convertible bond issues, invest in the Sahara oil boom, and create an open-end investment fund to lure small investors into the French stock market.

Reyre commands his remarkable complex by speed, secrecy and a computerlike memory for figures. Helping to guide the destiny of more than 100 companies, he surrounds himself with young engineers, not bankers. "You can't invest in modern industry without understanding the ticklish technical questions," he says, "and it's a lot easier to teach an engineer finance than to teach a financier engineering." So well does that formula work that Paribas profits ($5,000,000 last fiscal year) topped those of all other French banks, including the larger nationalized institutions.

Still a daring skier despite his age, Reyre also keeps a private hunting preserve (quail and pheasant) near Rambouillet and a country estate near Le Mesnil. Dispensing with his chauffeur, he likes to drive to the country in his beige 200-S Mercedes convertible, top down. One of the reasons why he would not live in New York, he recently said, "is because if you turned up at El Morocco with a starlet, everyone in town would immediately know about it." His private office, fittingly enough for a builder of financial empire, is the richly furnished sanctum where Napoleon married Josephine while her former lovers looked on. The room is classified as a historic monument, so Reyre is obliged to open it once a year to curious tourists. Fortunately for his love of privacy, few seize the opportunity.

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