Be Willing to Stand Alone: Euronext CEO Stéphane Boujnah

0:00A CNBC original podcast. In 2016, Stéphane Boujnah was three months into his new role as CEO of Euronext, when he faced a decision that would define his tenure. The London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Bank, two giants of European finance, had announced plans to merge, a move that would create a powerhouse that would dwarf Euronext. Some people around me were telling me, Stéphane, stay calm, stop being aggressive. I took a radically different position. I decided we would kill this transaction. Bougenard campaigned behind the scenes to destabilise that deal, a move that could easily have backfired.

0:42With limited support, he had to choose whether to compromise, adapt or stand alone. The defining force to make decisions as a leader is your appetite to be lonely. Because if you cannot stand being alone, then you pay. then you compromise. That became one of the defining rules of his leadership. But Bougenard says that instinct was shaped much earlier. The moment in my life that was the most defining in building the person I am was when I was one of the founders of SOS racism in the 80s, fighting the far right. He wasn't choosing a career path. He was choosing to act, to take a stand and to step into conflict in pursuit of something larger than himself.

1:22At the moment where you are emotionally equipped for unpleasant conversations, Then you can take risks and manage risks properly. These are Stéphane Bougenard's executive decisions.

1:38I'm delighted to have this opportunity to learn more about you. And in my research, I found a very fascinating man. I found a man who apparently, in his own words, grew up between a pack of beers and a formica table. but a man who then had an obsession of being strong at school and working hard. A man who also, by his own words, could have easily been a pizza delivery driver. Why are you the intellectual, the philosophical thinker, the CEO of Euronext, rather than the alternative that you could have been? I was educated in a very poor school. The French system is totally public. And one day, the French literature or the French language teacher called my mother and said to my mother, the kid has to do Latin.

2:29Latin was not available in this school. So at the age of 12, I was sent to the main city. And I started for five years, seven hours per week of Greek, ancient Greek, and seven hours per week of ancient Latin in this state school by teachers who were super committed to their job. and gave me the energy to develop self-confidence. And I became knowledgeable and good in that. And my dream job was to be an archaeologist. And I was accepted to the relevant school in Paris after high school. And my father, who was a factory worker, told me, I'm not going to, and the university is free in France, but he had to pay for a room and for food and accommodation.

3:12And he said to me, I'm not going to pay a place in Paris for you to wash stones because you can't feed your family by washing stones. So you'll go to law school. And I went to law school. My father left school at the age of 13. He's from Tunisia. He reads French, but he hardly writes. And my mother is a schoolteacher. And my father was telling me only two things. To succeed, you say, good morning, sir, when you meet the mayor in the village and you work harder than everyone else because that's the way you can bypass them. I was trained with the obsession that hard work is the only available resource for the ones who don't have resource.

3:56And that's very often, it's quite convenient because the ones who were raised between a piano and a bookshelf usually are not incentivized to work hard. And that's the way you can bypass them in the market economy and in a meritocratic environment. You say, if I don't work hard, I will not succeed in life. Do you think that was what inspired you? Or was it your mother that inspired you? Or was it necessity that inspired you? Or was it these magnificent teachers who said, we want him to do classics? First, you want to have a better life when we are not poor. We are just what in the UK where you like putting people in boxes, you call lower middle class.

4:33We could not buy everything we want. When it comes to clothes, to toys, you develop the idea very quickly that the world is not fair. When I was a teenager, I developed this fundamental conviction that if I make it one day, I need to bring opportunities closer to talents and to bring talents closer to opportunities. So the frustration of not having a pleasant young years provided a lot of energy, but also a lot of opportunities to think and to read books and to reflect about how to repair the world and how to make it a better place. You decided with your father's guidance as well to choose law early on, but you also chose socialism as well.

5:16Is there any contradictions in what's going on in the decisions you're making as an early man that laid the foundation for later on in life? My parents would not have been able to afford the type of education I got from the state. The state paid top quality classical education for me. I want that to be replicated because by the forces of gravity, only the privileged kids would have got access to the type of education I got. I believe that there is a value in making sure that in future generations, more kids have access to opportunities as I did. You first came to my notice as a socialist with your SOS Racisme, left-wing international movement, anti-racist NGOs.

5:58Then in 2000, Entrempe Real as well, progressive think tank as well. One of the co-founders there, Agoshe en Europe. There's lots of different examples of you being a very active socialist. It's more than that. I feel that you are not a complete human being if you only take care of yourself. On the one hand, I had to feed my family and to develop in the private sector as a lawyer and in other sort of jobs to be independent. But on the other hand, I had a feeling of life being incomplete if I was not contributing to transforming things. I don't do much sports beyond what is required to keep my body presentable.

6:40You're rare, by the way, for a CEO. Most CEOs I speak to love the... I do for hygienic reasons, the minimum that is required. What I do for real since I'm a teenager is that I spend time talking to people who want to make the world a better place. Because, I mean, a non-committed citizen is a useless citizen. But when you are fortunate enough to have created a safe harbor, a safe place, you owe society time. I know this is one of your mantras. Yeah. And I just want to know if this has guided your decisions in life. To rest or to remain free, one must choose. When you make decisions in life, is that pretty much one of your guiding lights?

7:25Yes. My experience, I've been CEO only once in my life, and that's the job I am doing at Euronex. It was a crappy company with a 1.4 billion market cap, and it's now a 13, 14 billion company, part of CAC 40. and we have been relatively successful and I wonder what did we do so differently from the others and I realized that everything I do every day is not intellectually demanding people like the idea that they invent solution or that they have vision etc I have no vision on anything I mean I remember the best you have no vision on anything I have no vision on anything I have a purpose and I can come back to it but what is really difficult is to make things happen for real and to make it happen for real, the defining force is your emotional framework.

8:16Most people don't take tough decisions, not because they are intellectually complicated, but because they are emotionally difficult. Most people hate being confronted to unpleasant conversations. Most people hate to be emotionally confronted to accountability. At the moment where you are emotionally equipped for unpleasant or painful conversations, and you are relaxed about being accountable for failure, then you can take risk and manage risk properly. Choosing between a good option and a good option is not a decision. Choosing between a good option and a bad option is not a decision. The real decisions are choosing between two bad options.

8:56The defining force to make decision as a leader in a company or in any other situation is what is your appetite to be lonely? because if you cannot stand being alone, then if you need friends everywhere, then you pay, then you compromise. The Dutch have a say, it says the best recipe for failure is to please everyone. So if you please everyone, you fail, but you have friends. So they don't give you authority just to do easy things. They give you authority because they believe that the management of complexity requires some form of intellect, but intellectual analysis is a commodity. Smart peoples are everywhere.

9:42What is rare is people who have the courage to confront unpleasant, difficult things.

9:57Tell me about one of those key decisions in your life that you can think of here, where you've only had a bad option and a bad option. I'm just really fascinated to see what you consider one of your bad decisions you made in life, when you only had bad decisions made there, and how you coped with it. Well, I mean, it's a bit business-related, and I hope it's not too specific. But I joined your next in December 15, in February 16. Karsten Kengate of Deutsche Börse announced that he was merging with LSE run by Xavier Rollet. the combination of these two Godzilla companies was going to be a big threat for a tiny dwarf like us.

10:37And option one was to derail this deal to create space for the future. Option two was to say, okay, they are going to make a lot of money. Let's try to make a little because this is a new normal. And some people around me were telling me, Stefan, stay calm. Stop being aggressive. Don't try to derail this transaction. This is a new world. Let's find your space. By the way, you have just joined. You're not responsible for that. I took a radically different position. I decided that we would kill this transaction. So I met Mrs. Vestager. Which is an incredibly aggressive thing to do. And I went to see Mrs.

11:18Vestager three times. I convinced her. Who was the European Competition Commissioner at that time. I went to see the Minister of Finance of the Land of Hesse in Wiesbaden, who is the supervisor of Deutsche Börse. I spent four hours in Wiesbaden. And the guy told me, you're spending more time in Wiesbaden than the CEO of Deutsche Börse, who is 40 kilometers away in Frankfurt. And I convinced them that the deal was bad. We created a situation where the European Commission didn't like the deal. And because time kills deals and because the leaders involved did not appreciate the political dynamic and the social dynamic around Brexit with the right level of accuracy, the deal collapsed.

12:02But by doing that, I found myself in a conflict against LSE and Xavier Olley without access, without having fixed my clearing problem. so I created more and certainly more volatility but I opened optionalities and that was a tough decision and I wasn't because I had no legitimacy I was I had the CEO of large French companies can you stop being ridiculous and making your life miserable with them I had the chairman of BNP told me oh calm down don't be so obnoxious and I had all sorts of great people I said you know what if you want these things to happen you make a takeover on the company you take over the control you buy it you change the board they change me and you decide what but for the time being for the time being as long as i'm in charge and mandated by the shareholders and by this board this is the view but it was tough one might argue single-handedly um stefan that you killed european bourse integration, which is something in the current day here in early 2026, people are saying might be the answer to our capital market problems.

13:08This deal was bad for three reasons. It was a Frankenstein deal because they did not have the fundamental cultural fabric to make the deal. It was a PowerPoint project. The two leaders were former traders from Goldman Sachs and did not have the sort of vision. It was a carcin at UBS as well, if I remember correctly. At some point of time, but both of them didn't have the sort of European vision that was necessary to do it. Ultimately, they came to the European Commission, to Mrs. Vestager, and they lectured her about why the building a European champion was good. I went to Mrs. Vestager and I told her things in a very different manner.

13:56I told her, Mrs. Vestager, you have two jobs. You are a judge and you are a political leader. Let me walk you through the legal arguments why this combination of Deutsche Börse analysis doesn't make sense. And let me walk you through the arguments why from an industrial European viewpoint is the wrong deal. you will decide how to weight the political arguments and the legal arguments this is your case because you aren't but i'm not going to lecture you and and i created a symptom where i recognize her authority and and the fact that she was to decide how to weight the various arguments most CEOs when they get to antitrust say you don't know what is good for Europe let me lecture you why we need European champions put the idea on the plate for her and let her make up her mind Exactly.

14:40Stefan, this was a huge decision to go into battle against these two titanic exchanges. You won. You won that battle. Yes. I know that you're a thinker. I know that you look at philosophy. But there must be some part of you here to be very, very excited about the fact that your decision actually succeeded and won the day. Yes, yes, because if you are convinced that what you need is internal resources, forces, strength, might, that allows you to confront adversity. And if you are not stupid, and if you have energy, and if you can convince people, and if you read complexity, and if you are more agile, more agile than others, and more courageous, you prevail.

15:27I just want to go back and ask one thing about your characteristics. Enormous strength. Where does that come from? You are asking probably the most fundamental question. Success in life is 50 % about self-confidence, and the other half is a lot of luck and a little bit of talent. So where does self-confidence come from? Empty people get nowhere, and we are surrounded by many empty people. The ones who get somewhere are the ones who have some somewhere in turn. I believe my sort of ideological background, I believe that the moment in my life that was the most defining in building the person I am was when I was one of the founders of SOS racism in the 80s, fighting the far right.

16:11You were 20 years old. I was 20 and I became one of the five leaders of this organization. I built a conviction of what needs to be done to change things. So when you are capable to confront others, including at that time physically some far-right gangs with whom we had physical fights, as you could expect in continental Europe with students' life, you are fit for, I'm not scared by anyone. I'm not scared by anyone. And that's how, if you are scared, you lose. If you are not scared, you prevail. Do you like being competitive? I've got one quote. I mean, it understates it enormously. A little provocative at times is one of your colleagues when you worked for Dominic Strauss-Kahn, and we'll talk about that period in a few moments.

17:01But do you like being combative in your decision-making and in your life? I don't enjoy it particularly because, no, I'm not enjoying being combative, but I'm successful in confrontation moments because I feel that I have to do it. You don't decide who on your, I'm much better. I'm enjoying deliberation, cooperation, collaboration. I'm curious. I'm extremely interested in other people's society, civilization preferences, and so on. But when people want to frustrate those plans, and when I believe that I'm right and that they are wrong, I fight in a very calm way. I want to just go backwards again, if I may.

17:46There's a couple of periods of your life I want to discuss as well. One is your education. In some ways, it's a very traditional education. La Sorbonne, Institut d 'Etudes Politiques in Paris, DEA in law from Sorbonne, I mentioned their master's degree, MBA at ANSIED, and a law degree at Kent University as well. When you say governments pay for your education, you meant the British government as well, which is very nice. Absolutely, and let me use this opportunity and I mean it. What was the key decision? What was the most important decision? Let me hijack your podcast to thank your parents and the readers who, with their tax money, paid for my LLM at Kent with the scholarship of the British Council.

18:25I was at Sciences Po a very talented student. I had the opportunity to go to two places. Georgetown for doing an LLM in Washington and University of Kent in Canterbury. Clearly, from an academic point of view, these are not similar institutions. But what was the difference? In Georgetown, I had to pay$1 ,000 per month for accommodation, housing, and stuff. For Kent, the British government, the British Council was paying tuition fees, accommodations in Bishopgate in the dormitories there, some eliminates for the food plan, one return tickets every two weeks to go to Russell Square to London, to the London Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

19:05So it was a no-brainer. I didn't have$1 ,000 per month. Now, what I didn't know at that time is that I should have borrowed money from a bank. But in a French context where the taxpayers paid for everybody's education, we were not even educated to that. So I went to Canterbury, which is a wonderful city with great teachers. And I became immersed in the deep fabrics of the British society. And I'm very grateful for that.

19:36I want to talk about a character who I got to know very well when he was at the IMF. And this is the former French economy minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. A controversial figure who, let's face it, lost his job eventually because of misbehavior. But you were a senior advisor between 1997 to 1999 with Dominique Strauss-Kahn. A huge brain, an incredible thinker as well. Was that a pivotal period deciding to go and work for him? At that time, I was a lawyer with Freshfields. And when President Jacques Chirac called for snap elections and were in a very surprising manner, the Socialists won. Lionel Jospin became prime minister.

20:13He appointed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as minister of finance. He did not know Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Dominique Strauss-Kahn appointed one of my friends, his chief of staff. And Chief Strauss-Kahn called me one day and said, Stéphane, you are a successful lawyer at Freshfields. Dominique Strauss-Kahn believed that there are too many people from the bureaucracy, too many civil servants in his team, in his close team. He wants people with fresh views, and he wants someone who speaks good English to interact with the rest of the world. So he called me and said, are you happy to divide your salary by three to join our team?

20:45That's quite a decision for a young man. Married with two young kids and to pay the judo classes, et cetera. Let me get this right. You're 33 at this moment. So I divorced from my wife at that time a few years later, but I was still married with two young kids. and it was a big decision. And I said, yes. So I joined the team. I was interviewed by Dominic Sroskan and he asked me to take care of basically all the projects that were about interactions with the rest of the world. And I spent a lot of time at 10 Downing Street at that time because I was systematically sent to all these policy network meetings.

21:21Tony Blair at that time had a view that he should develop a soft power and to create a sort of common turn of social democrats. And 2007 to 1999 is exactly the cool Britannia. This is when Tony Blair is in the ascendancy. Absolutely. He's just won the election in 1997. When Mandelson is not a controversial figure where everything goes rosy. So why was that period working for Strauss-Kahn such a pivotal part? He was an inspiring leader. it's a moment you know you are powerful and successful when you are aligned as a person between who you are your skills your values your personal professional competences and when you work for in what we call in french le cabinet which is basically it means the closed team of a minister you are totally aligned with you want this government to succeed you want your minister to succeed.

22:21You believe in his core agenda, which was to reconcile France with globalization and to reconcile the socialists with the modernity and with business. We have a purpose. And when you have a purpose, you have an inspiring leader, you have brilliant top gun colleagues, and what you do makes a difference when you spend the night in parliament to make sure that your boss, Bill, is becoming an act of parliament is changing the life of million people you feel relevant 2015 one of my favorite headlines and i translated this last night in le monde stephan bougner a socialist a la bourse now they were slightly wrong because you left the socialist party in 2013 but i love the title but you got your job as the ceo of the euro next you've never been a ceo before stephan bougner a socialist at the bourse why did you make that decision So I was offered the job of CEO of Euronext for one simple reason.

23:22Nobody wanted it. And that's true. It was a piece of crap. It was the dead wood that Jeff Sprecker, who had bought Nisey Euronext, didn't want to keep. In 2013, Jeff Sprecker bought Nisey Euronext. He kept the cherries, the New York Stock Exchange, the life, which used to belong to Euronext. I used to work on it for 11 years. And then all the deadwood he didn't want to keep, basically, Europe cash equity trading market. He dumped it. He could not sell it. He did a five IPO for$1.4 billion. The CEO resigned six months after the IPO. The CFO resigned three weeks after I joined. Nobody wanted a job.

24:04They could not find anyone. Otherwise, he would have turned to somebody like me with zero CEO experience, zero market infrastructure experience. So I interviewed, and at that time, the big issue on the table was the fighting between the French and the Dutch component. And they felt that because I was managing Europe, I had the flexibility to fix it. But honestly, I've seen the names of the other guys. They were okay, but I was marginally better than them, comparing. What they did not expect is that it would be so successful. You created a company which is the biggest stock exchange operator in Europe.

24:40Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Oslo, and of course, the Borsa Italiana acquisition as well. And Dublin and Athens. And Dublin and Athens. A lot of decisions there to make the operator pan-European and to drive that consolidation. We already talked about your destroying of the Carsten, Kenyatta, Xavier, Rolais, London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bors, Deal as well. Tell me about what you consider your best decisions during that period. All this expansion went well because we have a model that works, which is a model where I fundamentally believe and sincerely, it's not fake, that in Europe you don't have large countries and small countries.

25:27You have large markets and small markets, but you have only great nations with each of them something specific and unique and therefore precious. The first thing I do every time I go into a country where I'm starting discussions, I'm asking my team, find a place where people take their kids and where school trips are organized. I want to visit the Museum of National History. And I do that every time. Where you show respect, genuine respect, or genuine curiosity or interest for who the others are. When you go beyond the 500 words of global business English that you learn at INSEAD, when you go beyond PowerPoint, and when you try to get as quickly as possible to the common fundamental values, you make yourself different from the other players.

26:15And that's how we won against NASDAQ in Dublin. That's why we won against NASDAQ in Norway. That's how we won against Deutsche Börse in Italy. That's why we won against everyone in Greece, etc. I've looked at various qualities that drive your ethos, but actually, I want to quote your wife, if I can, rather than you. I found this quote, and it really mattered, and I wonder whether that's a driver of your decisions as well. Your wife is Helene Roch. She's a consultant, author, but she says, I'm committed to not having to choose between the planet we will leave our children and the children we will leave our planet as well.

26:53That, for me, is really powerful. It's made me think an awful lot about what she's saying. Is that as important for you in how you drive your decisions? Yes. Yes. In particular, in this particular moment, I feel that I am at the right time, in the right place, to prevent what my parents, my grandparents, and their grand-grandparents have built since 1945. Now, today, someone is telling us in the US, this is all over, let's go back to the pre-1945 where only strength and force and might prevails. China is getting in this environment too. Putin has demonstrated that it is a set of preferences. So we need to find ways to make sure that next generation will benefit from what we have benefited, which is a space where we can remain free and where we can have church pilgrimage and gay prides, where we can vote for Farage or Corbyn without any interference, where we can contribute to our way of life, which is all about freedom of speech, democracy, the independence of justice, social cohesion, etc.

28:06And if we don't take care of that, if we become slaves of the rest of the world, if we are not prosperous, if we are not strong, then those values will evaporate. Stéphane Bougenard, CEO of Euronex, thank you very much indeed for a very powerful interview. Thank you for your time, sir. Thank you. Stefan Bougenar, the CEO of Euronext, is a huge intellect. He dragged himself off, very modest beginnings, by sheer hard work. Inspirational teachers, professors, his mother, who made him work harder in order to succeed. He originally wanted to be a classicist, but then became a lawyer and then an incredibly successful banker as well.