Of all the clubs in the world, the Club of 100 in France may be the most exclusive. Its ranks include leaders in business, politics and law, but it's the admission policy that really makes the Club des Cent, as it is known here, truly remarkable: only when an existing member dies is space made for a new one.
Officially, the club, now 96 years old, is devoted strictly to gastronomy, and when the group gathers Thursdays for lunch at legendary Paris restaurants like Maxim's, politics and business are not on the menu. Claude Bebear, the chairman of AXA, the French insurance giant, and a club member for more than two decades, says that there is "an atmosphere of real friendship; we are very close."
The same is true of the French business establishment. A close-knit brotherhood - it's nearly all male - that shares school ties, board memberships and rituals like hunting and wine-tasting, the French business elite is a surprisingly small coterie in a nation of more than 60 million people.
But in the wake of a US$7-billion loss attributed to a rogue trader at one of the nation's leading banks, Societe Generale, France's modern-day aristocracy finds itself in the one place it never wants to be: the spotlight.
While the trader, Jerome Kerviel, now jailed, wasn't a graduate of a top school or a member of an elite group like the Club des Cent, Societe Generale's embattled chief executive, Daniel Bouton, is both. And the fact that Bouton and other top managers of the bank have kept their posts since the scandal erupted nearly a month ago has unleashed criticism here that the French elite is an ancien regime - playing by old rules (largely its own) and quick to shift blame to protect itself.
"Is there a tendency in France for the elites to be made in the same mold and close ranks?" asks Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher and social observer. "Yes, it's an old French disease."
In the US, Britain or Germany, Levy adds, "Daniel Bouton would not only have been relieved of his job, but he'd be in a judge's office being questioned."
Indeed, the controversy comes at a time of broader tension in both French business and politics, with a new generation fighting for power against an entrenched old guard, says Stephane Fouks, executive co-chairman of Euro RSCG, one of the largest marketing and communications firms in France.
"At the moment, French capitalism is in a crisis, and it's creating momentum for a change," Fouks says. Within the traditional establishment, he says, "everybody was friends, very diplomatic, and it was a club where at the end of the day, it was always better to find an arrangement."
Members of the elite make no secret of the rules of the game. "When you are part of a small group, it is difficult to have an attitude of antagonism toward someone else in the group," says Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former president of France. "In a bigger group, there is less interference of personal considerations."
Bouton was not available for comment. But Philippe Citerne, Societe Generale's co-chief executive and a member of its board of directors, said establishment connections have nothing to do with the fact that Bouton is staying on.
"The board of directors twice unanimously confirmed its confidence in Mr Bouton," he said. "There's no way we could deliver services to 27 million customers in 82 countries if we were a small French club."
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