Many European residents approaching banks are being faced with a more stringent set of financial checks. Some banks are also lending a smaller percentage of a property’s value, meaning that borrowers who wish to take out a new mortgage to purchase a property are required to raise a larger deposit. Spain is one example of the countries that have seen their banks becoming stricter on mortgage lending. According to a Bloomberg report, the number of mortgage loans being granted in Spain fell by more than 41 percent between the start of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, with mortgage lending decreasing for 21 months in a row up until January. The problem for European borrowers looking for mortgages is also being exacerbated by rising interest rates in countries such as Italy and Portugal, making mortgage repayments less affordable.

Banks in many European countries have been tightening their lending criteria for overseas residents to an even greater extent. For example, French banks have reduced the amount of mortgage loans granted to residents of other countries significantly since last year, implementing a far stricter approvals process and reducing the maximum loan to value ratio as well as the maximum repayment term allowed. France has imposed relatively strict controls for some time but they are becoming tighter, with the amount of gross income required for a borrower to be granted a mortgage increasing. In the past, French banks have granted mortgages where the monthly repayments are no more than one third of the borrower’s income but banks have recently allowed a smaller proportion of income to be considered for repayments.

European banks have had to become stricter on mortgage lending recently for a number of reasons. Most significantly, the European sovereign debt crisis and difficulty in accessing money markets have led to a shortage in the funds available for banks to lend to borrowers in the form of mortgages. This caused the banks to be more cautious in their lending, ensuring that the money they do lend is granted to low-risk borrowers. The potential implementation of a new European mortgage directive could mean that borrowers face further difficulty in accessing mortgages. Although the directive protects the borrower in many ways, such as ensuring that they are given accurate information and are made aware of risks, it would also ensure that banks put potential mortgage borrowers through stricter assessments before approving the mortgage loan.

According to Business Insider, Société Générale originally planned to cut 500 jobs over the course of 2011 but the actual number rose to approximately 2,000, equating to a loss of approximately 13 percent of the bank’s total workforce. Staff cuts may continue as the bank announced that it was planning for around 880 of its staff to leave voluntarily while around 700 more based in centres outside of France may also lose their jobs.

Olivier Godechot, a CNRS sociologist who specialises in finance noted that “Société Générale’s job cuts are a symbol” of the broader malaise in the French banking world.

The bank is also reducing the scale of its investments across a number of areas, including aircraft and real estate. According to the New York Times, this is representative of what is happening with many European financial institutions in the wake of the eurozone crisis, stating that, “Like other European lenders, Société Générale has begun reducing its dollar-financed businesses, after American money-market investors began over the summer to cut their exposure to European banks amid fears over the euro.” SocGen are likely to sell American property loans worth a total of around $100m to the Blackstone Group in the near future.

One of the most significant factors that led to SocGen downsizing was the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. The bank was hit particularly hard by having to write off much of its Greek debt. Like other major French banks such as BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, SocGen saw its share price fall as a result. The downsizing efforts are aimed to rebuild capital after being left with a capital deficit of around €2m.

Recently, Société Générale and other major French banks have been deleveraging or selling assets off quickly, in order to reduce their total debt. Kepler Capital Markets’ Pierre Flabbee explains what is happening with SocGen and other French banks, “The deleveraging is a response linked more to their liquidity stress.”

In addition, finance headhunting company founder Gaël de Roquefeuil commented on what the current situation represents for the future, “French banks are giving up businesses where they were leaders worldwide.”

Le Gall continued his career in the space industry when he moved to the Department of Industry, working in the Space Office with special responsibilities for the space industry.  He then went on to work with the development of the CNES and ESA projects. In 1993, he became the managing director of Novespace, a CNES subsidiary, and in 1996 he became the deputy managing director at CNES itself. After two years he joined Starsem based in Paris, that was set up to promote the commercialisation of the former Soviet Souyuz launcher programme. Ariannespace has a 15 percent shareholding in Starsem.

From 2001 until the present day Jean Yves Gall has worked at Ariannespace and he became the company’s CEO in 2002. One of his chief roles at Ariannespace is to foster international relationships between the company and overseas governments. He still holds his position at Starsem and in 2011 was behind two Soyuz launches from French Guiana.

Le Gall has often said that the future of the space industry lies in the Middle East and the Asia- Pacific region. Arianespace itself is experiencing the effects of the global financial crisis, though from 2002 the company was able to successfully launch 46 Ariane 5 missions.

Recently, le Gall was behind the successful launch of the Vega rocket from the ESA site in French Guiana. This launch will pave the way for European scientific research in space.  One of the satellites on board Vega is the LARIS that will examine Einstein’s famous relativity hypothesis. This event is seen as the start of an ambitious project for Arianespace. “We are off to a good start as we’ve already signed two commercial launch contracts to launch satellites aboard Vega,’ said Le Gall.

Grube has a substantial history in the management of companies in and related to the transport business. In the years immediately prior to his appointment at Deutsche Bahn, he was working on the management board at Daimler, where he also had a number of other high profile responsibilities. These included areas such as corporate strategy and development, and mergers and acquisitions. He acquired a number of years of experience at Daimler, including more than four years of managing business activities in the region of north-east Asia, including China.

Grube’s career in the transport industry took off following successful studies and training in automotive engineering and aircraft construction, which he undertook at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and later in business teaching, at the University of Hamburg. Initially he remained at the University of Hamburg in a teaching capacity, lecturing in production and engineering, until completing his doctoral degree in industrial science and polytechnology.

Following the successful completion of his doctorate, Grube built on experience gained in his own business as a consultant in the field of new technologies, by taking up a position at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), which had been among his clients.  At MBB, he led the marketing, sales, and international relations activities in the area of energy and industrial technology, and he remained in this position for a year, before moving on to Deutsche Airbus, where he was appointed head of the management office.

Grube remained in the aerospace industry until 1996, occupying a number of managerial positions with different companies.  After his time at Deutsche Airbus, these positions were mainly at Daimler-Benz Aerospace, where he served as head the site at Ottobrunn, then head of aviation staff, with particular responsibility for the Airbus and military aircraft, in Munich, and later as director in charge of corporate planning and technology.

This experience within Daimler-Benz Aerospace meant that, by 1996, he was in a good position to take up an appointment as Senior Vice President, and also Head of Corporate Strategy, at Daimler-Benz AG.  In 1998, he retained these two positions at DaimlerChrysler AG after being central to the merger with Chrysler, and he became Senior Vice President for Corporate Development in the year 2000.  A further change followed at DaimlerChrysler, when he was appointed a deputy member of the board of management in 2001, and he remained at the company until his move to Deutsche Bahn, eight years later, in 2009.

Haeusler, who turned 60 in 2011, has had a long career in international investment banking, going back to around 1978, when he started out at Deutsche Bundesbank after working for a period as an intern at the company. He had received training as a banker and as a lawyer, with the financial part of his education being received at Deutsche Bank in the town of Darmstadt in Germany. His legal studies were then carried out in Frankfurt and in Geneva, in the period before he took up the Deutsche Bundesbank internship.  However, it is in the years following 1994 that Haeusler established himself as a major player in international banking.

After 16 years at Deutsche Bundesbank, Haeusler was appointed to the board and to the central council at the bank. However, two years later, in 1996, he then moved on to Dresdner Bank, where he served on the board of the investment banking arm, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. In addition, he took on external directorial responsibilities at a number of companies, including Airbus Germany, as well as a series of other high profile positions in Germany, such as membership of the German Stock Exchange Advisory Panel.

It was in 2001 that Haeusler confirmed his growing international reputation with a move to the IMF, based in Washington DC. At the IMF, he managed the Capital Markets Department as counsellor and director, before leaving in 2006 to take up a joint base in Frankfurt and Paris as part of his appointment to a number of roles at the US investment bank Lazard.  Lazard appointed him a managing director and vice chairman of the Lazard international business, and he also became a member of the Lazard Germany advisory board.

Between 2008 and 2010, Haeusler served on the board of RHJ International, a financial investment company, and during this period he also became an acting deputy chairman of the supervisory board of Bayern LB.  It was this appointment that put him in a prime position to take the reins as CEO in 2010.

Meanwhile, in addition to his duties as Bayern LB CEO, he is also on the supervisory board at MKB Bank Zrt and on the administrative board at DekaBank.  Haeusler is a member of the Group of Thirty.

In 2003, in the midst of a bear market, Cantera was selected to be Citigroup’s head of global stock research, moving up from his former position as Smith Barney’s lead analyst for Latin American stocks.  The move by Smith Barney/Citigroup was designed to turn aside regulatory pressures that had come to bear after its reputation had been damaged by the actions of a former telecommunications analyst. The newly hired Sallie L. Krawcheck identified Garcia Cantera as a research leader who would be able to identify areas within the company that could be consolidated to save money and create a more streamlined unit. He did just that and has continued to move up within the company, using his quiet competence to pave the way for success in all his endeavours.

His strong vision has helped Banesto-Santander weather the challenges of the volatile market. At the onset of the recent economic downturn, the bank identified three management priorities; maintain a strong liquidity position, raise capital ratios and strengthen the balance sheet in order to maximise profitability.

The balance sheet has been improved by focussing on narrowing the 2012 commercial gap. Banesto is also unique in being the only listed bank not to have raised capital in the last nine years. Looking to the future, Cantera is proposing to bring in customers from areas typically underserved by large banks, such as innovating in rural regions. He holds the strong belief that innovation in such areas is imperative, as they make up 92 percent of the EU.

Cantera may be wise to focus on new and emerging markets, as the bank was required to make a €400m provision for underperforming real estate assets. This caused Banesto to report a 73 percent drop in yearly profit, giving investors and analysts one more concern in an already troubled Spanish market. Forecasts were predicting a profit of €316m and while the bank still delivered a profit, it was only €125m.

Analysts note, however, that Banesto has been partially protected from the full effects of the Spanish construction sector collapse by its diversification into Latin America and other emerging markets, so Cantera’s plan may already be bearing fruit. During 2011, the bank’s net interest income fell 12 percent to €1.45bn and bad loans, as a proportion of assets, rose to nearly five percent. With increased regulation likely to be introduced by the Spanish government, his long-term vision for emerging countries may be the best path for Banesto to travel.

Ljung was born in the UK but grew up in Sweden. He attended Stockholm University from 2001 to 2004 where he studied philosophy, literature, politics, international relations and film music. He then took a year’s course in marketing at the Stockholm Technical School from 2005 –2006, and completed his studies at the Kungliga tekniska hogskolan, where he developed his interests in human computer interaction.

The skills, which Alexander was later to use with the founding of SoundCloud, were developed at ALC Ljuddesign, where Alexander worked as a sound designer. From this company Alexander progressed to KTH Human Computer Interaction where he worked as a researcher. The business skills that Alexander was able to adopt with SoundCloud, were first learned at SF Anytime where he worked as a business and development producer.  From 2002 until 2007 Alexander founded and ran akryl.p, a media productions agency.  The agency had a list of very high profile clients, including Absolut, MTV, Philips and many other prestigious brands.

Alex Ljung started his collaboration with Eric Wahlforss in Sweden but moved to Berlin in 2007 where they delivered an online platform that allows musicians to collaborate more easily than some of the other social networking sites. Some users have described SoundCloud as “email for music”.

In 2011 the company received investment from Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures of $10m, this was in addition to an earlier investment of $3.3m in 2009 from Douglas Hanson Technology Ventures. Ljung also opened a base in San Francisco in 2011 and by June SoundCloud had managed to amass an impressive five million users and had attracted additional investment from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary. The company prides itself as being responsive to its community of users and its website is easy to use and helpful.

In 2011 SoundCloud received the Schroders Innovation Award. By January 2012 the company announced it’s  user and in order to celebrate the founders produced a “storywheel”, which can be listened to on the company website.

The development of mobile technology has also inspired the duo, in their own words they said  “everyone now has a portable recording device in their pocket” and to date five million apps have been downloaded. The SoundCloud user base has expanded to journalists, storytellers and bloggers and an ever-increasing array of musicians.

Between 1987 and 1990 he served as director of traffic and road safety, and also as the interdepartmental representative for road safety. In 1990 he became the regional director responsible for the facilities for Essonne, a position he held until 1993. In this year he became the deputy chief of staff for the tourism, transport and facilities minister.

In 1995 he was appointed as Director General of Civil Aviation, a position that he held until 2002. In June 2002 he became the Chief of Staff for the Minister of Transport, Facilities, Tourism, Housing and the Sea, a position in which he remained until September 2003.

In September 2003 he became the new Chairman of the Aeroports de Paris (Paris Airports Company), a public institution at the time. In July 2005, he became the first CEO and Chairman of the new private company, Aeroports de Paris.

Graff also serves on the supervisory board of NV Luchthaven Schiphol, and as a director of France Telecom where he represents the French Government. He is also the Deputy President of the International and European Affairs division of the French National Tourist Board.

He also represents the French government on the Paris Public Transport Authority (RATP) and serves as a director of MEDEF in Paris. On top of all that he is an Officer of the National Order of Merit, as well as an Officer of the Legion of Honour.

During the nine years he has been with Aeroports de Paris, Graff has proved himself only not to be  a very capable engineer, but also a master negotiator and administrator.

When he took over the reigns of the company, it faced a clear competitive advantage on the airside, with three runways at Paris-Orly and Paris-Charles de Gaulle providing two runway pairs, but faced ongoing problems with airport terminal capacity.

Between 2006 and 2010 the company, under his leadership, invested more than €3bn to build new regional terminals and boarding lounges to increase the capacity of its airport terminals by 25 percent.

Graff was recently in the news when he spoke during a conference in the Turkish city of Istanbul on the March 2012. At the conference it was announced that Aeroports de Paris had bought an 18 percent stake in TAV Havalimanlari, the Turkish airport’s operator, from Akfen Holding. The Akfen statement formed part of a filing to the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

At the same conference it was also confirmed that Aeroports de Paris would purchase a 38 percent stake in the Turkish company TAV, for a sum of $874m

Suhl turned his attentions to the fashion industry in 1997, when he became managing director at Thimister, before being appointed director of business development at Courreges in 1999.

He joined Prada in 2005, where he enjoyed rapid promotion, securing successive appointments as general manager, France and CEO, Asia Pacific, most recently taking on the role of COO for the Prada Group, which incorporates the Miu Miu and Car Shoe brands.

Prada’s arch rivals announced Suhl’s appointment at the beginning of March, saying Suhl would take up the position with immediate effect.

Suhl replaces Susan Whitely, a former employee of Louis Vuitton UK, who has held the position of CEO at Givenchy for the past year. Whitely has relinquished the post to allow her return to the UK for personal reasons.

Suhl’s appointment followed shortly on the heels of the unveiling of Givenchy’s latest collection at their catwalk show in Paris, and his appointment to the helm of the fashion giant will provoke widespread anticipation within the industry regarding the direction in which the high-flying executive is likely to take the company.

A well-respected figure within the industry, Suhl has raised his public profile by speaking at the Business of Design Week Forum in Hong Kong.

It is likely that Suhl will continue to expand the brand’s customer base via newly-emerging markets in the east, including China and India. Suhl has long been aware of the potential for expansion into these regions, as the ‘nouveau riche’ classes created by rapid economic growth in the countries increasingly hunger after consumer goods at the luxury end of the market.

“We believe we have only begun to scratch the surface of China’s potential,” said Suhl, whilst still employed by Prada.

Suhl’s instinct to expand into the east has the backing of those in the know, with one firm predicting that China will have a 44 percent share of the global luxury goods market by 2020.

With branded luxury goods becoming the cultural norm in an ever-expanding market, it is likely that Suhl’s meteoric rise to fame in the fashion industry has yet to peak.

Falkengren gained a degree in economics from Stockholm University before joining SEB as a trainee in 1987. She joined SEB’s Trading and Capital Markets division the following year, progressing to become Global Head of Fixed Income in 1995, Global Head of Trading in 1997 and Head of Merchant Banking in 2000. Moving to the Corporate & Institutions division in 2001, she went on to become Deputy Group Chief Executive in 2004. In 2006, Falkengren succeeded Lars H Thunell to become an SEB board member for the first time.

In addition to her role at SEB, Falkengren also serves as chairperson of Enskilda Securities AB and director of Ruter Dam. A director of the Mentor Foundation and the IMD Foundation, she has also been director of SEB AG since May 2010.

Falkengren’s formidable track record in banking and finance has been embellished by her more recent achievements in other sectors. The Volkswagen Group nominated her to the company’s supervisory board in early 2011. Shortly after gaining board membership with Volkswagen, Falkengren was also nominated to the board of insurance group Munich RE.

The Swedish media have enjoyed Falkengren’s personality – portraying her often as a celebrity businesswoman. Named ‘the most powerful woman in Swedish business’ by Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer in 2005, her popularity within the media was further fuelled by the fact that the birth of her child in 2005 came just months before she gained Chief Executive status at SEB. Her other accolades include being ranked 68th amongst the ‘100 most influential people in European capital markets’ by the Financial News Online. Global business magazine Fortune subsequently ranked Ms Falkengren as the seventh most powerful woman in global business (second most powerful in Europe) in 2008, and the eighth most powerful in 2010.

Annika Falkengren’s outstandingly successful career in banking may be attributed in no small part to her propensity to approach banking issues from two distinct angles, that she terms ‘hard factors’ and ‘soft factors’. Hard factors include accurate risk management, strong corporate governance and universal transparency. Soft factors, judged by Falkengren to be gaining in importance in today’s market, include a holistic approach to customers’ needs, excellent customer service provision and the application of a long-term approach in all areas.

While it is no exaggeration to say that Annika Falkengren is an iconic figure in the world of business, her place in the spotlight does nothing to detract from her genuine talent, and the wide-ranging abilities that have enabled her to attain the prominent position in her field of expertise that she currently enjoys.