“His name was Bernard, he had many lives. Lots of friends. He was also quite an idiot. Hard as a bulldozer. He liked to be right. He liked to disagree, he liked to be where he was not expected. He loved journalists, writers, books, setting up “deals”. He had even written novels. He was left-wing, really left-wing. And at the same time…” It is with these words that Johan Hufnagel, former editorial director of Liberation, and co-founder of Loopsider, announced on January 9, on his LinkedIn account, the death, following cancer, of Bernard… Bernard Mourad, overactive, at the same time investment banker, business manager, investor and entrepreneur , writer, producer and advisor to Emmanuel Macron during his presidential campaign in 2016.
Born in Lebanon on October 2, 1975, this graduate of Sciences Po Paris began a career in finance in the 2000s as an investment banker within Morgan Stanley. Described as “atypical” and a man in the shadow of Patrick Drahi, Bernard Mourad, then “managing director” in charge of the media & telecom sector, notably advised the billionaire on numerous “deals”: merger of Numericable-Noos, IPO of Altice, merger of Numericable-SFR, acquisition of Portugal Telecom, “rescue” of Liberation or, again, redemption of L’Express. In January 2015, he left the bank – against which a cassation appeal is underway to force Morgan Stanley to pay him 1.4 million euros in deferred bonus – and took over as president of Patrick Drahi’s media group, Altice Media. Group (L’Express, BFM, RMC…).
His relationship with Emmanuel Macron
From October 2016 to May 2017, he became special advisor to presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron. “Here’s the only guy who still insults me”said Emmanuel Macron, in 2018. A confidence slipped by the president to Vanity Fair at the origin of a portrait of Macron’s advisor. A year after the end of their collaboration, if he still called the president “my rabbit” and bombarded him with SMS messages with smileys, Bernard Mourad, then boss of Bank of America in France, did not spare the one he had met during a job interview in 2008 at Morgan Stanley. For example, during the Benalla affair or regarding the president’s tax policy.
“We don’t come down to just one job, we don’t come down to just one passion and I have tried to fulfill my various passions over the last few years”he explained on Ali Badou’s microphone, on France Inter, in 2018.
The creation of Loopsider
In October 2017, co-created with Johan Hufnagel, Arnaud Maillard, Giussepe de Martino and Franck Papazian (Strategies, CB News, Journal of luxury, Who’s Who) the news video media dedicated to social networks Loopsider, of which he was, until his death, president. In 2023, the CMI France group, publisher of Elle, TV 7 days or Marianneannounces the purchase of 45% of Loopsider.
-Writer of capitalism
Bernard Mourad also published novels. His first work, Physical Assets (JC Lattès, 2006), tells the story of a man deciding to list his body on the stock market. It was notably translated into German by the publishing house Ullstein, under the title Buy Me! (Buy me!). In 2008, he published the dystopian novel Free trade (JC Lattes).
Humanist
The banker, slash media creator, slash novelist, invested his bonuses to create the mySOS application. This start-up connects a person who has suffered a heart attack or an attack to a network of local volunteers ready to intervene, in less than five seconds. An innovation reminiscent of the emergency service launched by Bernard Tapie in 1975, Coeur Assistance, minus the controversies.
Related News :