In 2016, Stéphane Boujnah was three months into his new role as CEO of Euronext when he faced a decision that would define his tenure. The London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Boerse, two giants of European finance, had announced plans to merge, a move that would create a powerhouse that would dwarf Euronext. Some people around me were telling me, 'Stéphane, stay calm. Stop being aggressive.' I took a radically different position. I decided we would kill this transaction. Boujnah campaigned behind the scenes to destabilize that deal. A move that could easily have backfired. With limited support, he had to choose whether to compromise, adapt or stand alone. The defining force to make a decision as a leader is your appetite to be lonely, because if you cannot stand being alone, then you pay, then you compromise. That became one of the defining rules of his leadership. But Boujnah says that instinct was shaped much earlier. The moment in my life that was the most defining in building the person I am was when I was one of the founders of SOS Racism in the 80s, fighting the far right. He wasn't choosing a career path. He was choosing to act, to take a stand and to step into conflict in pursuit of something larger than himself. At the moment where you are emotionally equipped for unpleasant conversations then you can take risk and manage risk properly. These are Stéphane Boujnah's Executive Decisions.
I'm delighted to have this opportunity to learn more about you. And in my research, I found a very fascinating man. I found a man who apparently, in his own words, grew up between a pack of beers and a Formica table, but a man who then had an obsession of being strong at school and working hard. A man who also, by his own words, could have easily been a pizza delivery driver. Why are you the intellectual, the philosophical thinker, the CEO of Euronext, rather than the alternative that you could have been?
I was educated in a very poor school. The French system is totally public and one day the French literature, or the French language teacher called my mother and said to my mother 'the kid has to do Latin.' Latin was not available in this school. So at the age of 12, I was sent to the main city and I started for five years, seven hours per week of Greek, ancient Greek, and seven hours per week of ancient Latin in this state school by teachers who were super committed to their job and gave me the energy to develop self-confidence, and I became knowledgeable and good in that. And my dream job was to be an archeologist, and I was accepted to the relevant school in Paris, after high school, and my father who was a factory worker told me I'm not going to, and university is free in France, so but he had to pay for a room and for food and accommodation, and he said to me I'm not going to pay a place in Paris for you to wash stones, because you can't feed your family by washing stones, so you'll go to law school, and I went to law school. My father left school at the age of 13 he's from Tunisia he reads French, but he hardly writes, and my mother is a school teacher, and my father was telling me only two things. To succeed, you say Good morning sir when you meet the mayor in the village and you work harder than everyone else because that's the way you can bypass them. I was trained with the obsession that hard work is the only available resource for the ones who don't have resource, and that very often it's quite convenient because the ones who were raised between a piano and a bookshelves usually are not incentivized to work hard and that's the way you can bypass them in a market economy and in a meritocratic environment.
You say if I don't work hard, I will not succeed in life. Do you think that was what inspired you? Or was it your mother that inspired you, or was it necessity that inspired you, or was it these magnificent teachers who said we want him to do classics?
First, you want to have a better life. When, we were not poor, we were just what, in the UK where you like putting people in boxes, you call lower middle class. We could not buy everything we want, when it comes to clothes, to toys. You develop the idea very quickly that the world is not fair. When I was a teenager, I developed this fundamental conviction that if I make it one day, I need to bring opportunities closer to talents and to bring talents closer to opportunities. So, the frustration of not having a pleasant young years provided a lot of energy, but also a lot of opportunities to think, and to read books, and to reflect about how to repair the world and how to make it a better place.
You decided with your father's guidance as well to choose law early on, but you also chose socialism as well. Is there any contradictions in what's going on in the decisions you're making as an early man that laid the foundation for later on in life?
My parents would not have been able to afford the type of education I got from the state. The state paid top quality classical education for me. I want that to be replicated, because by the forces of gravity only the privileged kids would have got access to the type of education I got. I believe that there is a value in making sure that in future generations more kids have access to opportunities as I did.
You first came to my notice as a socialist with your SOS Racisme, a left-wing international movement, anti-racist NGO's. Then in 2000, En Temps Réel as well, progressive think tank as well, one of the co-founders there, A Gauche en Europe, there's lots of different examples of you being a very active socialist.
It's more than that. I feel that you are not a complete human being if you only take care of yourself. On the one hand, I had to feed my family and to develop in the private sector as a lawyer and in other sort of jobs to be independent, but on the other hand, I had a feeling of life being incomplete if I was not contributing to transforming things. I don't do much sports beyond what is required to keep my body presentable.
You're rare, by the way, for a CEO. Most CEOs I speak to love their...
I do for hygienic reasons the minimum that is required. What I do for real for since I'm a teenager is that I spend time talking to people who want to make the world a better place, because I mean, a non-committed citizen is a useless citizen. But when you are fortunate enough to have created a safe harbor, a safe place, you owe society time.
I know this is one of your mantras and I just want to know if this has guided your decisions in life. 'To rest or to remain free, one must choose'. When you make decisions in life, is that pretty much one of your guiding lights?
Yes. My experience, I've been CEO only once in my life and that's the job I am doing at Euronext. It was a crappy company with a 1.4 billion market cap and it's now a 13, 14 billion company part of CAC 40 and we have been relatively successful and I wonder what did we do so differently from the others. And I realized that everything I do every day is not intellectually demanding, people like the idea that they invent solution or that they have vision etc. I have no vision on anything. I mean, I remember the best...
You have no vision on anything?
I have no vision on anything. I have a purpose, and we can come back to it, but what is really difficult is to make things happen for real and to make it happens for real, the defining force is your emotional framework. Most people don't take tough decisions not because they are intellectually complicated, but because they are emotionally difficult. Most people hate being confronted to unpleasant conversations. Most people hate to be emotionally confronted to accountability. At the moment where you are emotionally equipped for unpleasant or painful conversations and you are relaxed about being accountable for failure, then you can take risk and manage risk properly. Choosing between a good option and a good option is not a decision. Choosing between a good option and a bad option is not a decision. The real decisions are choosing between two bad options. The defining force to make a decision as a leader in a company or in any other situation, is what is your appetite to be lonely? Because if you cannot stand being alone, then, if you need friends everywhere, then you pay, then you compromise. The Dutch have a saying, the best recipe for failure is to please everyone. So, if you if you please everyone, you fail, but you have friends. So, they don't give you authority just to do easy things. They give you authority because they believe that the management of complexity requires some form of intellect, but intellectual analysis is a commodity. Smart people are everywhere. What is rare, is people who have the courage to confront unpleasant, difficult things.
Tell me about one of those key decisions in your life that you can think of here where you've only had a bad option and a bad option. I'm just really fascinated to see what you consider one of your bad decisions you made in life, when you only had bad decisions to make there, and how you coped with it.
Well, I mean it's a bit business related and I hope it's not too specific, but I joined Euronext in December 15 in February 16 Carsten Kengeter of Deutsche Boerse announced that he was merging with LSE run by Xavier Rolet. The combination of these two Godzilla companies was going to be a big threat for a tiny dwarf like us, and option one was to derail this deal to create space for the future. Option two was to say, okay, they're going to make a lot of money, let's try to make a little because this is a new normal. And some people around me were telling me, 'Stéphane, stay calm. Stop being aggressive. Don't try to derail this transaction, this is a new world, let's find your space, by the way, you have just joined, you're not responsible for that.' I took a radically different position. I decided that we would kill this transaction. So, I met Mrs. Vestager...
Which is an incredibly aggressive thing to do for a new CEO at Euronext.
And I went to see Mrs. Vestager three times. I convinced her...
Who was the European Competition Commissioner at the time.
The European Competition Commissioner at that time. I went to see the Minister of Finance of the land of Hesse in Wiesbaden, who is the supervisor of Deutsche Boerse. I spent four hours in Wiesbaden, and the guy told me you're spending more time in Wiesbaden than the CEO of Deutsche Boerse, who is 40 km away in Frankfurt, and I convinced them that the deal was bad. We created a situation where the European Commission didn't like the deal, and because time kills deals and because the leaders involved did not appreciate the political dynamic and the social dynamic around Brexit with the right level of accuracy, the deal collapsed. But by doing that I found myself in a conflict against LSE and Xavier Rolet without access, without having fixed my clearing problem. So, I created more uncertainty, more volatility, but I opened optionality's and that was a tough decision, and I was not, because I had no legitimacy, I had the CEO of large French companies said, 'Can you stop being ridiculous and making your life miserable with' - I had the chairman of BNP telling me, 'Oh, calm down. Don't be so obnoxious.' I had all sort of great people. I said, 'You know what? If you want these things to happen, you make a takeover on the company, you take over the control, you buy it, you change the board, they change me and you decide, well done. But for the time being, It was an enormous decision. For the time being, as long as I'm in charge and mandated by the shareholders and by this board, this is the view. But it was tough.
One might argue single-handedly Stéphane that you killed European Bourse integration, which is something in the current day here in early 2026 people are saying might be the answer to our capital market problems.
This deal was bad for three reasons. It was a Frankenstein deal because they did not have the fundamental cultural fabric to make the deal. It was a PowerPoint project. The two leaders were former traders from Goldman Sachs and did not have the sort of vision...
Wasn't Carsten at UBS as well if I remember correctly?
At some point of time. But both of them did not have the sort of European vision that was necessary to do it. Ultimately, they came to the European Commission to Mrs. Vestager, and they lectured her about why building a European champion was good. I went to Mrs. Vestager and I told her things in a very different manner. I told her, 'Mrs. Vestager you are you have two jobs. You are a judge and you are a political leader. Let me walk you through the legal arguments why this combination of Deutsche Boerse and LSE doesn't make sense, and let me walk you through the arguments why, from an industrial European point viewpoint, it's the wrong deal. You will decide how to weigh the political arguments and the legal arguments, this is your case because you are input, I'm not going to lecture you.' And I created a situation where I recognized her authority and the fact that she was to decide how to weigh the various arguments. Most CEOs when they get to antitrust say 'you don't know what is good for Europe, let me lecture you why we need European champions.'
You put the idea on the plate for her and let her make up her mind.
Stéphane, this was a huge decision to go into battle against these two titanic exchanges. You won. You won that battle.
I know that you're a thinker, I know that you look at philosophy, but there must be some part of you being very, very excited about the fact that your decision actually succeeded and won the day.
Yes, yes, because if you are convinced that what you need is internal resources, forces, strength, might, that allows you to confront adversity. And if you are not stupid, and if you have energy, and if you can convince people, and if you read complexity, and if you are more agile, more agile than others and more courageous, you prevail.
I just want to go back and ask one thing about your characteristics. Enormous strength. Where did that come from?
You are asking probably the most fundamental question. Success in life is 50% about self-confidence and the other half is a lot of luck and a little bit of talent. So where does self-confidence come from? Empty people get nowhere, and we are surrounded by many empty people. The ones who get somewhere, are the ones who have some internal force. I believe my sort of ideological background, I believe that the moment in my life that was the most defining in building the person I am was when I was one of the founders of SOS Racisme in the 80s, fighting the far right.
I was 20 and I became one of the five leaders of this organization. I built a conviction of what needs to be done to change things. So when you are capable to confront others, including at that time physically some far right gangs with whom we had physical fights as you could expect in continental Europe with students life, you are fit for 'I'm not scared by anyone, I'm not scared by anyone', and that's how, if you are scared you lose, if you are not scared you prevail.
