“I was in a huge fog”

Monday December 23, 2024, Éric Lombard was appointed Minister of the Economy in the Bayrou government. However, more than 23 years ago, the politician found himself at the forefront of the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York, as he recounted on Classical Radio in 2023.

The suspense is over! After several days of waiting, this Monday, December 23, 2024, the composition of François Bayrou's government was revealed. Among the people appointed by the Prime Minister, there is Éric Lombard who obtained the post of Minister of the Economy. Shortly after his appointment, an old interview he gave to Classical Radio in 2023 has resurfaced. In it, the former general director of Caisse des Dépôts recounted having been at the forefront of the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York. At the time of this terrible tragedy, Éric Lombard was responsible for mergers and acquisitions at the BNP Paribas bank.

«We had to finalize the next day, I was waiting for the agreement of the general management in Paris,” revealed the man who is married to a visual artist, regarding the acquisition of Keefe Bruyette, an American bank. If on September 10, 2001, the politician was on the 95th floor of the South Tower, which would be hit the next day by one of the kamikaze planes, on the very day of the attack, he had an appointment in this same tour, at 8:30 a.m. While he was at the BNP Paribas headquarters in a Manhattan building and wanted to leave to get ahead and go to his meeting to finalize the deal, his teams insisted that he wait a little longer.

“Then what happened was something of a miracle for us,” Eric Lombard told Classical Radio. Before continuing: “The president made a phone call to say that he was taking his daughter to school and that he was moving the meeting to 9 a.m..” A call that will ultimately save his life! Shortly after this, the current Minister of the Economy and his team understood that one of the two twin towers of the World Trade Center was on fire before witnessing live the crash of a plane in the second tower . When they collapsed, the politician “felt like I was being sucked into the ground. It's a terrible shock. Because people we had seen the day before were concerned.he confided. Before adding stun: “I was in a huge fog, it took me until the evening to regain my senses, and even then it wasn’t quite the case”.

Éric Lombard marked for life by the attacks of September 11, 2001

After this terrible tragedy, the acquisition of the American investment bank will never be done by the BNP Paribas bank. But that did not prevent him from lending his premises located in the south of the island of Manhattan to the survivors of Keefe Bruyette. Éric Lombard remembers their return to the offices: “a terrible moment”. “The elevator doors opened and we found out who had survived”had told the new tenant of Bercy on Classical Radio in 2023.