Pathfinder General

Date: 19/09/1996

REVOLUTIONARIES make for more interesting copy than consolidators.

The replacement of bright-spark Belgian banker Georges Ugeux as the president of the Luxembourg-based European Investment Fund (EIF) with low-key German career civil servant Thomas Oursin is just the latest example.

But ask anyone in the field and they will tell you that Oursin, who takes over as head of the EIF on 1 October, could not be bettered as a consolidator, a man with tried and tested management skills who will build on the recent overhauls at the infant organisation.

Created only two years ago to provide guarantees for loans to small companies and transport projects, the EIF has grown rapidly.

Lending has soared and Ugeux - parachuted into the top job only a year ago to shake up the fund and give it an identity separate from that of its big brother, the European Investment Bank - succeeded in winning the support of shareholders for it to begin taking equity holdings.

Then, in June, Ugeux proved that bankers are human by accepting a plum job with the New York Stock Exchange, at least in part so as to be closer to his sons.

The increasingly ambitious EIF was suddenly left rudderless.

Looking for a transitional figure, the shareholders went no further than the office of the EIB's secretary-general. After two years in that job, the 65-year-old Oursin was planning his retirement. He had already bought a house in Munich in readiness for the big day - but he could not say no.

“He was not a demandeur for the job,” says a colleague. “But he has a strong sense of duty.”

During his term, Oursin must concentrate on juggling the various interests of the EIF's shareholders: the EIB, the European Commission and 76 banks (some public and some private) from 15 different countries.

He must also maximise the abilities of a team of just 26 people, leveraging its strengths and eking out big investment opportunities while carefully managing the risk.

While scouring the 'Luxembourg A-Z' for a new home for the fund - which is now based in the EIB itself - Oursin will also have to oversee an increase in staff numbers and the natural evolution of the SME and transport wings of the EIF into separate divisions.

Because the SME side is the more labour-intensive of the two, staffing needs in this area will probably grow faster than they will for transport projects.

Overseeing this transition will not be easy, especially given that the fund, as a relatively new institution, has no tradition to rely on.

But colleagues believe that Oursin has the skills needed to meet that challenge.

“What he will bring to the fund is not technical expertise, but managerial ability,” says a friend who has worked with him for more than 20 years.

“He showed his managerial abilities very clearly during his spell as secretary-general of the EIB. He is affable and that is vital in the bank, or the fund, which run on collegiality and consensus. He is also a good man-manager.”

A keen walker, Oursin belongs to a long-established rambling club in Luxembourg known as the March Hares. The club appoints map-makers, who choose the routes the rest of the group should follow.

Fellow walkers say Oursin adopts the same approach towards his favourite pastime as he does to his work.

“Thomas' speciality is the Moselle. He marched us all the way through the Moselle valley, but he was always regarded as a balanced pathfinder. Others had a much more military nature,” says one.

“He was never first and never last. He was always in the middle, aware of everyone around him and careful not to leave troops behind. He has a consensual view of life and that applies as much to his walking as his management style.”

That approach was tested last year as EIB President Sir Brian Unwin instituted a management shake-up in the organisation. He felt that the bank's expertise in the appraisal of projects was illogically divided into separate teams of engineers and economists. In a break with the past, he and Oursin oversaw a major reform to create multi-disciplinary teams. Instead of economists doing one job and engineers another, a single set of technical experts would appraise lending plans in a single projects directorate.

“Thomas' term as secretary-general coincided with a period of fundamental change in the bank's organisation structure,” says a colleague.

“Even though these came from the president and the management committee, Thomas was a critical element in getting them through.”

Both his former colleagues and his new ones testify to Oursin's kindness.

“There were a number of times when he exercised compassion in the office, certainly way above the call of duty,” says an EIB colleague.

That concern for others was demonstrated to the full when the usual whip-round began at the EIB before his departure. The new EIF president is an active member of the Protestant church in Luxembourg and asked that the money collected for his farewell present go either towards the restoration of the organ at the church or to a fund set up by a colleague whose son had been killed in Bosnia.

Oursin comes from southern German stock, although a couple of generations ago, a Protestant Oursin ('sea urchin') arrived from France to make his fortune.

Born in Dessau, the young Thomas Oursin studied economics and business and then moved straight into the study of development issues, a subject which has remained close to his heart ever since.

For ten years, he worked at the Ifo Economic Research Institute in Munich and divided his time between there and various African countries from 1963 to 1966. It was in Uganda that one of his four daughters was born.

“His first love is development,” says a friend. “He has a strongly developed sense of community and of doing his bit for society. If he was not at retirement age and a suitable development job came up now, I am sure he would take it.”

In 1967, Oursin went to the World Bank in Washington, where he perfected his English. His French is also good and he has picked up enough Dutch on his walking holidays to get by.

But English is his preferred language. “He has worked for so long in English that he is happier in it,” says an associate. “If it were not for the politics, I think he would do it all the time.”

Nevertheless, despite his international persona, Oursin has kept in touch with a network of German friends throughout the world.

“You can be almost anywhere in the world and he will pick up the phone and find someone he knows,” says a colleague who has travelled with him widely.

And, unlike many others in the banking world, Oursin is no workaholic.

“One of the great balancing acts he managed to achieve as secretary-general was to maintain a balance between his private and his professional life,” says a friend.

Oursin and his wife Brigitte are close. While she enjoys reading, she indulges his passion for walking and playing the organ and he, in turn, chooses routes she will enjoy.

Consensual as always - and that, according to a colleague from Oursin's World Bank days, is “ just what the fund needs”.