Relaxing with his copy of Financial News on the Eurostar not long ago, Yann Gérardin spotted a kindred spirit in a profile of one of his investment banking peers.

Daniel Pinto, chief executive of JP Morgan's investment bank, had told FN that it was "an absolute privilege to have the chance to run this organisation in probably the biggest period of change, with the biggest challenges in the last 70 or 80 years". That was in July 2015, and Gérardin, who had become head of the BNP Paribas investment bank only the previous September, couldn't have put it better himself.