The European Central Bank is likely to stop increasing interest rates by the end of the year as inflation slows, Natixis SA Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Paix said.
“Probably there will be a sort of stabilization in the level of rates which will give confidence to the economic actors,” Paix said Saturday in an interview with Bloomberg Television at a conference in Aix-en-Provence, southern France.
While the level of the equities market is quite high, she doesn’t expect it to plunge barring any major geopolitical event, said Paix, who was appointed to run the Paris-based investment bank in December. However, volatility, which has been high for the last three years, will remain in the picture, she said.
In this context, Natixis, which has already hired traders from Credit Suisse Group AG before the Swiss bank’s collapse this year, may keep doing so in the future.
“We are pragmatic; if we need people we can ask Credit Suisse employees if they want to come,” she said, though the bank won’t chase them specifically.
Strong Institutions
While the images of the recent riots in France after the police killing of a teenager of Northern African descent are not a positive for the image of France abroad, the country has the means to transform itself in the coming years, Paix said.
“There are skills, there are very strong institutions, financial institutions in France that will resist,” she said.
