Jacques-Philippe Marson, president and CEO of BNP Paribas Securities Services, has stepped down from the role. It is understood that his departure was not a voluntary one, and follows an alleged but unspecified breach of the internal rules of the BNP Paribas group.
The decision was taken on Monday afternoon by senior executives of the bank. Marson has already been replaced by Jacques dEstais, the former global head of corporate and investment banking at BNP Paribas who recently assumed leadership of the asset management and services division of the bank that encompasses BNP Paribas Securities Services as well as private banking, real estate and asset management.
No other changes are being made to the leadership of BNP Paribas Securities Services, and no change in strategy is anticipated underlining the personal nature of the decision.
The news of the departure of Marson will come as a shock to both clients and staff of BNP Paribas Securities Services. Marson, who had run the business for over ten years since becoming a member of the management board in July 1998, was a CEO built in the visible and passionate mode. He was easily the most high profile figure in European securities services, arguing forcibly for the interest of his firm and the industry in public as well as in private, notably during the contest between the sub-custodian banks and Euroclear (where he was, ironically enough, also a board member) in the early part of this decade. He was equally voluble in the debates surrounding T2S.
Prior to joining Paribas, Marson was executive vice president and head of the Global Investors Services Group at State Street, where he was responsible for all asset servicing business outside the United States. He had joined State Street in July 1992 as senior vice president and head of international operations, having left Cedel in Luxembourg after clashing with its then CEO, Andre Lussi. At Cedel he was a member of the Management Board and Executive Vice President in charge of Business Development, Operations and Treasury, as well as chairman of the credit committee.
Marson joined Cedel from SWIFT. Prior to that, he spent 12 years with JP Morgan (including a spell at Euroclear, where the American bank then held the operating contract). He has served on the boards of SWIFT, Omgeo and the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) as well as Euroclear.
His replacement, the 50-year-old Jacques dEstais, worked at BNP Paribas for the last 25 years, and swapped jobs earlier this year with Alain Papiasse, formerly head of the asset management and services division of the bank in which BNP Paribas Securities Services fell. Papiasse became the head of investment banking in an internal management reshuffle that followed losses in the investment banking division in 2008.
DEstais is a Paribas man, rather than a BNP one. He joined Paribas in 1983 as an account officer in the Commercial Banking department in Paris, subsequently moving on to the Treasury department in 1986. Early in 1988 he was transferred to Paribas London as the Global Head of Interest Rate Options, before being appointed Global Head of Equity Derivatives in 1991. From 1995 dEstais worked in Japan as General Manager of Paribas Capital Markets Japan. In January 1999 he was transferred back to London as Chief Operating Officer for Fixed Income. In June 2000 he was appointed Global Head of Fixed Income for BNP Paribas, covering all bond, derivatives and FX activities world-wide. He became Global Head of Corporate and Investment Banking in December 2005, and served in that position until the job swap with Alain Papiasse in February this year. DEstais graduated from the Ecole des sciences Economiques et Commerciales (ESSEC) in 1981.
Dominic HobsonEditor-In-Chief