Most people decisions in a bank are made twice: once in the paper that approves them, and again in the months when an adviser drives to a new branch, a manager explains a pay range or a team learns that software will now read its files. I try to write the second decision into the first. If we cannot describe what a change asks of a named group of employees, we have not finished deciding it.
Selected leadership work / 01
Closing twenty-seven branches over thirty months instead of fifteen
In early 2021 the board asked management to reduce our network from 111 branches to 84.
I treat every structural change in a bank as a set of obligations to the specific employees whose work it moves, and I want those obligations costed before the change is approved.
I am chief human resources officer of Banque Ardevrange, a member-owned regional cooperative bank serving the Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle départements along France's borders with Luxembourg and Germany. We employ 1,860 people, run 84 branches and two advice centres, and reported €428 million of net banking income in 2025. About 236,000 member-shareholders own the bank through 52 local cooperatives, and their elected representatives form our board. I sit on the executive committee, report to the chief executive and lead a human-resources team of 64.
I did not arrive through the branch network. I spent six years advising employers on labour law in Strasbourg and six more in employee relations at a fund administrator in Luxembourg, where colleagues commuted from three countries and worked in four languages. That background shapes how I approach a bank's people questions. A consultation with the CSE, our works council, is not a formality to schedule after the decision. It is often the first moment anyone asks how the change will actually be lived.
The decisions described on this site involve closing branches, correcting pay that nobody could explain and withholding deferred pay from managers after a conduct failure. Each one cost the bank something it valued: a year of savings, part of a merit budget, a high-performing desk head. I set out those costs beside the results, because a remuneration or nomination committee needs to see what a people decision gave up before it can judge whether the decision was worth making.
Twenty-seven branches closed over thirty months, with 204 colleagues kept
Phasing the 2021–2024 network plan in four waves deferred about €4.1 million of savings, but 204 of the 238 people in affected branches continued with us in other branches or in our two advice centres.
An unexplained adviser pay gap cut from 6.8% to 2.3%
We spent €1.94 million across 2025 and 2026 raising the pay of 312 employees after a job evaluation, funded partly by reducing the 2025 merit budget from 1.1% to 0.7% of payroll.
Malus applied to two managers after a suitability failure
When cross-border customers received unit-linked contracts documented only in French, the bank paid €2.3 million in remediation and cancelled €99,000 of the two responsible managers' unvested deferred variable pay.
Current focus
I am preparing our managers and the CSE for the next stage of automation in credit operations, so that new software changes the content of jobs through a consulted plan rather than through unexplained vacancies that are quietly left unfilled.
Conversations I welcome
I would consider one non-executive role, ideally on the remuneration or nomination committee of a European financial-services company outside retail banking, with up to twenty days a year once my employer and our own board's conflicts review have agreed.
The leadership record
Trusted with consequential decisions.
In the boardroom
Association Trévalmont pour l'alternanceUnpaid director and treasurer · 2022–present
Formation
Master's degree in labour and social-security lawInstitut Corvaleine de droit social · 1996
Camille argued with me for six weeks about the branch timetable, and she put the cost of her own plan on the table before I asked for it. She was right about the people and straight with me about the money.
Thierry ValmoureuxChief executive, Banque ArdevrangeThe full record ↗
Contact
I would consider one non-executive role, ideally on the remuneration or nomination committee of a European financial-services company outside retail banking, with up to twenty days a year once my employer and our own board's conflicts review have agreed.
