Chapter 852 President

Although the relationship between Ashley and Barron is not known to most people, there is no need to hide it too much in front of Hollande.

Those who can reach the position of president are not incompetent, at least they will have expertise in the worldly affairs.

Seeing some very natural intimate actions between Barron and Ashley, Hollande can naturally understand some things.

For this kind of relationship, the French are certainly not surprised.

Just like Hollande, he lived with his first girlfriend for 30 years, and the other party gave birth to four children for him, but the two never got married.

France can be said to be the country with the highest proportion of non-marital births even in Europe - many French couples choose to live together and have children, and never get married.

According to statistics from the French National Institute of Demographic Research, among the 775,000 newborns in 2000, 42.6% were born to non-married mothers, and by 2012, this proportion rose to 55.8%.

In other words, now nearly 6 out of every 10 newborns in France are born to non-married parents.

This phenomenon is directly related to the continuous decline in the marriage rate in France - from 2000 to 2011, the number of newlyweds registered in France decreased by 60,000.

The number of people who signed cohabitation agreements increased from more than 20,000 in 2000 to more than 210,000 in 2011 - considering that many non-married cohabiters do not go through the signing procedures, the actual number of cohabiting people should be higher.

This is also because the French marriage law is too protective of women and too harsh on men...

According to the French marriage law, if the two parties divorce, the man needs to give three-sevenths of his monthly income to the woman, and he must continue to give it until the woman finds a high-paying job...

That is to say, if the woman does not find a job after the divorce, the man must give nearly half of his income to his ex-wife.

And if the other party has a child, you have to raise the child, regardless of whether the child has a relationship with you!

This is the magical thing that French women live with their lovers while asking for money from their ex-husbands!

French men are not stupid, they can't just take advantage of women, so they choose not to get married to fight against this unfair marriage law!

This is why we see women in French movies crying so hard after being proposed to - because a man willing to marry you means you have a stable meal ticket!

Although French women are indeed happy under this marriage policy, French men also have their own coping strategies.

That is, they would rather date you for a lifetime than get a marriage certificate, which has led to a continuous decline in the marriage rate in France. In the end, the marriage rate of white people in France was only 3%, which seems incredible.

During this meeting with Hollande, Barron also saw a handsome young man next to him - this was the first time Barron met Manu.

During this time, Manu looked at Barron from time to time. It can be seen that he was suppressing his excitement to meet such a big man as Barron.

Although Manu is three years older than Barron, his status is much different from Barron's, whether it is his previous status as a civil servant, or his management position from NM Rothschild Bank to Natixis Bank, or even his current position as Deputy Secretary-General of the President...

Even Ashley Weber, the French financial strongwoman, now needs Manu to look up to.

Of course, things are unpredictable, and when the status is different in a few years, it will be another situation.

…

"Welcome to Natixis Bank, Ms. Lagarde."

"This is a very challenging job, and I like such challenges."

Then, Barron met Christine Lagarde.

As the longest-serving finance minister in France, unlike the original time and space, Lagarde did not become the first female president of the International Monetary Fund because Brown, who Barron supported, participated in the competition.

In addition, after Hollande took office as president, he appointed a new finance minister, Montebourg, and Christine Lagarde also left the position of Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry of France.

However, William Wade Capital extended an olive branch to Christine Lagarde and hired her as the president of Natixis Bank.

After merging the main business of LCR Rothschild Group, Natixis Bank became the third largest commercial bank in France after BNP Paribas and Societe Generale.

Currently, Natixis Bank has a lot of business in European countries such as France and Germany, and it also holds shares in some Asian banks.

For example, the 5% stake in Huaxia Qindao Bank originally held by LCR Rothschild Group now belongs to Natixis Bank.

Although in name, the president of the International Monetary Fund is more prominent, after all, it is a super organization that can mobilize trillions of funds.

But now, being able to serve as the president of Natixis Bank is a very good choice for Lagarde after she retired from the post of French Finance Minister.

"At present, we have acquired 9% of the shares of Commerzbank through the secondary market and some institutions. I will go to Germany soon to discuss with the German government to purchase the shares of Commerzbank they hold..."

Founded in 1870, Commerzbank is headquartered in Frankfurt and is one of the constituent companies of the German stock index DAX.

It ranks second among the three largest banks in Germany, second only to Deutsche Bank in size.

In addition, Commerzbank occupies an important position in the German banking system and, together with Deutsche Bank, represents the main commercial banks in Germany. The German banking system is dominated by universal banks, which not only provide conventional deposit and loan services, but also involve a variety of financial services such as securities, payment settlement, and trust.

At the same time, Commerzbank is also the largest real estate creditor in Europe, with more than four million customers.

It is for this reason that the bank announced a net loss of 6.6 billion euros in 2008, and continued to suffer losses in the following quarters - in the German government's bank rescue plan for the subprime mortgage crisis, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank rejected government rescue, but trapped in the liquidity depletion caused by the subprime mortgage crisis, Commerzbank received capital injection from the German government in 2009.

Deutsche Bank then completed the acquisition of Dresdner Bank in 2010, but this acquisition also brought billions of euros of toxic assets to Commerzbank.

As early as August 2010, German Economy Minister Brüderle demanded that banks that received state aid during the financial crisis should repay the aid as soon as possible - he hoped that Commerzbank would repay the debt within three years.

During the subprime mortgage crisis, Commerzbank received a total of 18.2 billion euros in capital injections from the German Financial Stability Fund (Soffin) in two installments, of which 1.8 billion euros would be exchanged for Commerzbank common stock - making the German government hold 25% of Commerzbank's shares and become its largest shareholder, and the rest were undisclosed shares (equity income needs to be paid in the form of debt interest).

In addition, the German Financial Stability Fund also provided a total of 15 billion US dollars in guarantees for commercial bank bond financing.

But later, Germany faced the European debt crisis, which led to a slow recovery of its banking industry.

Therefore, it is difficult for Commerzbank to repay these government debts in the short term as required by the government.