“I grew up in Tunisia, just 15 metres from the sea,” says Mohamed Kallala. “What I learned was that if you have a boat and want to stay stable, you need ballast. And if you want to go fast, you need a mainsail. If you want to fish or win a race, you need both.”
Mr Kallala, global head of Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB), uses the analogy to explain his view on guiding a bank through a crisis. Since he joined the French bank in 2005, he has already had to navigate four: the global economic crisis in 2007–09; the sovereign debt crisis in 2011; the impact of Covid-19 from early 2020; and, most recently, the impact of the war in Ukraine with its associated rising inflation and interest rates.
