Founder & Board of Directors

Christian Merle started his career at the Bank of France and in the early 1980s joined the Treasury Department of Ministry of the Economy and Finance in charge of bank supervision. There, he was involved in drafting banking law and in the bank privatisation programme. He then represented the Treasury Department as Financial Advisor in New York. In the early 1990s, he joined the private banking sector, first at Crédit Agricole, then at Indosuez, where he managed European development and supervised private banking activities, particularly in Switzerland. In 1998, he became Managing Director, and then CEO, of the newly created leading Italian banking group, Intesa in Milan. In the mid-2000s he returned to Paris and became a partner in a corporate finance boutique before founding his own strategic advisory firm for private and institutional clients in Geneva in the early 2010s. Christian is an independent director for several European banks and entities. He served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Intesa Sanpaolo Morval (Switzerland) until May 2018 and was appointed as Chairman of the Board of Directors of REYL & Cie Ltd in May 2021. He is a Member of the Business Committee until June 2024 and a Member of the Strategy Committee since July 2024. He is also Chairman of the Remuneration and Governance Committee.