• Julien Carmona, Chairman of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, and Nicolas Théry, Chairman of Crédit Mutuel and the Fédération de l'Est, appeared together on Friday at the General Meeting of Crédit Mutuel Centre Est Europe.
  • It is a peace, a reconciliation, which suffers from no ambiguity, "greeted Nicolas Théry to applause on the stage of the Zenith of Strasbourg.
  • This meeting comes three weeks after the signing of a historic agreement.

This is the end of a fifteen-year conflict. Julien Carmona, Chairman of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, and Nicolas Théry, Chairman of Crédit Mutuel and the Fédération de l'Est, appeared together on Friday at the General Meeting of Crédit Mutuel Centre Est Europe. All this a few weeks after an agreement endorsing the end of a long quarrel between the two banking entities.

"It is a peace, a reconciliation, which suffers from no ambiguity," greeted Nicolas Théry to applause on the stage of the Zenith of Strasbourg, in front of about 5,500 members of the largest federation of Crédit Mutuel. At his side, Julien Carmona said he was "very happy" to be there for "this reconciliation that warms the heart". The two entities, which have been at war with each other for years, have "many common values, many shared values", he added.



This meeting, "unimaginable" a few years ago, according to a close friend of Nicolas Théry, comes three weeks after the signing of a historic agreement. Internal tensions turned into a legal conflict in 2014, between Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, headquartered in Le Relecq-Kerhuon, near Brest, and the CNCM, the central body that oversees all the group's federations. The first accused the CNCM of centralization and favoritism in favor of the other dominant entity, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale (formerly Crédit Mutuel CM-11), which today brings together 14 federations.

Arkéa wanted to emancipate itself

In 2018, relations soured to the point that the Breton branch wanted to emancipate itself from the group, a project led by the former president of Arkéa, Jean-Pierre Denis, but which never came to fruition. Elected Chairman of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa in 2021 to replace Mr. Denis, Julien Carmona had acknowledged that "the supervision of Crédit Mutuel, instituted by law, had not prevented Arkéa from developing". While reaffirming that he was "without any hesitation" part of his bank's independence project, he still denounced "a tendency towards centralization".

But as the months passed, and while the independence project seemed to have stalled, discussions had resumed in the summer of 2022, before concluding in early May. Until this beautiful family photo.

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