The 2013 Tech 50: Olivier Le Grand

The first Basel capital standards were published in 1988 — the year before Olivier Le Grand took charge of BNP Paribas subsidiary Cortal. Today, Basel III is in place, and Le Grand considers it an opportunity. The longtime CEO of  Paris-based Cortal Consors, as the pioneering online brokerage has been known since Cortal’s 2002 merger with a German counterpart, expects that the more onerous, postcrisis capital requirements will constrain bank credit. He wants to prepare Cortal to meet “a greater need for capital markets solutions to financing.” Le Grand, 60, who is also head of BNP Paribas Personal Investors, has been expanding brokerage services throughout the parent bank’s branch networks in France, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg. In Germany the e-brokerage is being converted into a full-service online bank, with the goal of increasing customers from 600,000 to 1.1 million by 2016. Besides Germany, says Le Grand, India and Turkey — now with 627,000 and 65,000 clients, respectively — “should be the drivers of most of our growth over the next few years.” In May, Cortal launched the first trading application for Facebook users in India, which the firm entered in 2007. More than 10 percent of  Indian orders arrive via mobile phone, compared with 6 to 7 percent in Europe.