Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2026
Drawing on archival sources from Paribas as well as published statements from bank chairmen Jean-Yves Haberer, Michel François-Poncet and André Lévy-Lang, this chapter examines Paribas in the European economy of the 1980s and 1990s, the evolution of the bank’s business strategy amid the macroeconomic changes of market integration and market openings, and the bank’s perspectives on the Single Market and banking regulation in European economic governance. If carmakers like Volkswagen and BMW expressed enthusiasm about the business opportunities of the Single Market Program for their supply chains, production, and distribution and even supported the EEC’s efforts to develop environmental regulations, merchant banks like Paribas seemed rather ambivalent and even directly opposed to the regulatory and social dimensions of market integration through their lobbying efforts and business interest associations. In the early 1990s, the opening of Central and Eastern Europe presented new investment and growth opportunities making Paribas much more interested in business opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe, the “CEE,” than in the business environment of the EEC and its Single Market.
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