A top French M&A banker left HSBC. Now he has one of the biggest jobs in France
Being a top tier M&A banker is a lot like being a top footballer. Take Thierry Henry, for example, who had a stellar junior career, a rather lacklustre stint in Italy, and then got himself back to the top in his record-setting time at Arsenal. Some M&A careers are not so different.
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Alexandre Courbon joined BNP this month as co-head of its French advisory business. Courbon was off the market since March, and he was last head of European M&A at HSBC, a firm he was with since 2019 – and doomed since last year, when HSBC announced that it was closing its entire M&A franchise outside of Asia. BNP declined to comment, and Courbon did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s a pretty stellar step up for Courbon, all things considered. Data from market intelligence firm LSEG placed BNP as the 4th biggest M&A player in France across 2025, with around $37bn in deal volume closed. HSBC, by contrast, was 18th, with just $5bn in deal volume closed. In fact, LSEG’s figures suggest that BNP’s French M&A activity alone was on par with HSBC’s entire EMEA M&A footprint.
Much like Henry, Courbon has had an interesting career trajectory. Originally a lawyer with white shoe firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, he moved over to Societe Generale in Paris to work in its industrials M&A team. Just eight years later, he was appointed head of SocGen’s French M&A team and made an MD in the process. He spent four years there before moving on to HSBC.
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