Gérard Fohlen-Weill

Gérard Fohlen-Weill joined the firm in the summer of 2019, thereby extending collaborations begun more than ten years earlier.

He holds a master in business law and a diploma from the Institut supérieur de gestion, and he came to the Bar, unusually, after a long career in banking marked in particular by infrastructure project finance and public-private partnerships.

He began in 1976 with the Rothschild group, before joining in 1982 the CCF group, Crédit commercial de France, which became HSBC, as assistant director, then l’Européenne de banque in 1989, where he was responsible for the automotive, mining, food-processing and tourism sectors. From 1992 he joined the Banques populaires group, where he served as deputy managing director of SIGEC, its property subsidiary, and then, from 1996, as a director within the large corporates department.

He joined Natixis in 1999 as a senior banker responsible for the construction and civil engineering, environment and transport sectors, and in 2008 took part in the creation of the energy and commodities department, where he followed the African continent in particular.

Alongside his banking activities, he sat from 1995 to 2009 as a judge of the Paris Commercial Court, where he presided over a chamber from 2005 to 2009 before being appointed honorary presiding judge.

Admitted to the Paris Bar in February 2010, he joined Jeantet as senior of counsel, then in 2011 DLA Piper in Paris, within the Litigation & Regulatory team, where he brought his experience of general litigation, of restructuring and of banking and finance law, together with his knowledge of the French-speaking and sub-Saharan African markets.

He has served as a member of the supervisory board and as chairman of the audit and risk committee of the Caisse de garantie immobilière du bâtiment, having been a director of the CGI-FFB from 1983. He has also taught as an associate senior lecturer at the Cergy-Pontoise law faculty, on the DJCE, business law and business law and ethics masters programmes.

An honorary colonel of the French Air Force, he attended the 51st national session of the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (the French institute for advanced studies in national defence) and has been honorary president, since 2015, of the Union des associations des auditeurs de l’IHEDN.