Big game hunter of French banking

Mr Claude Bebear, the chairman of the French insurance giant AXA, is an elephant hunter. His headquarters in the avenue Matignon are filled with hunting trophies and if a visitor comments on the collection of antique hunting rifles, the man known as the godfather of French finance - American CEOs allegedly call him "Don Claudio" - is likely to open a cabinet and take one down for his guest to handle.

In business too, Mr Bebear hunts for big game. Described in business circles as "incredibly ruthless", the AXA chairman is widely believed to have pushed the chairman of Banque Nationale de Paris, Mr Michel Pebereau, to launch his twin hostile take-over bids against Paribas and Societ e Generale last March.

Mr Bebear's 1986 hostile take-over of the insurance company Providence was, according to Barron's magazine, France's first.

When in 1996, he took over his chief French rival, Union des Assurances de Paris, Mr Bebear promised the name would remain AXA-UAP. Despite strict French laws, he managed to fire 2,500 insurance agents, and the name UAP is now being dropped.

In the early 1980s, Mr Bebear began snapping up small mutual insurance companies. "He just crept in and spread his tentacles, in much the same way that [the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH chairman] Bernard Arnault did," a financial analyst in Paris says.

Mr Bebear christened his group AXA in 1984 because he already had global ambitions and wanted a name that would be easy to pronounce in all languages. Since then, he has built AXA into France's first insurance company, with a market capitalisation of €38.965 billion. It is the second insurance company in Europe, after the German Allianz, and the third in the world, after Allianz and the US company AIG.

The US insurer Equitable, Belgium's Royale Belge and Britain's Sun Life and Guardian Royal Exchange have also fuelled AXA's growth through acquisition.

Conflict of interest is an unknown concept in the incestuous world of French finance. Thus AXA owns stakes in all three of the banks involved in the present takeover imbroglio, and is represented on all three of their boards. When Paribas and SocGen announced their marriage last February, Mr Bebear applauded. But on March 18th, nine days after Mr Pebereau announced his hostile bids for the other two banks, Mr Bebear switched sides.

In the SocGen-Paribas camp he is regarded as a traitor, but that has not prevented him attending their board meetings.

Mr Bebear was motivated by simple calculations of power and competition, for the banking brawl masks another battle between the British insurer CGU, Allianz and AXA for the banking networks which now sell 60 per cent of all life insurance contracts in France. CGU and Allianz both supported SG-Paribas, but as foreigners they were severely handicapped. Mr Bebear supported BNP, and his support has been decisive.

Before the take-over battle, AXA held 7.2 per cent of Paribas shares, and 11.08 per cent of its voting rights. It was also the single largest shareholder in BNP, with 6.3 per cent.

By contrast, Mr Bebear's company owned less than one half of 1 per cent of SocGen. In an intricate, Chinese box structure, Paribas is also the first shareholder in AXA, because it owns 22.7 per cent of Finaxa which controls 20.4 per cent of AXA.

Not only did Mr Bebear risk seeing BNP sidelined by the SocGen-Paribas marriage. The main rival of the bank in which he was the first shareholder was about to become the first shareholder of AXA.

BNP gained control of Paribas last weekend, so Mr Bebear need no longer worry about Paribas's hold on AXA. AXA's shares have appreciated by several billions of euros in the battle, and now, if French authorities next week decide to allow Mr Pebereau to keep his 36.8 per cent share in SocGen and create SBP - "the world's first trillion dollar bank" - AXA will be its first shareholder.

Mr Bebear gave only one interview during the six-month take-over battle, to the Wall Street Journal - a move calculated to win over American investors with shares in the three French banks.

Boasting that the UAP take-over had made AXA "the world's No 1" (a debatable assertion), he argued that "in the current world, with all these megamergers, it's obvious that the creation of big entities gives you greater credibility".