I met André Baladi, a citizen of Geneva, in Paris in 1994, thanks to Stephen Davis then at IRRC. André was passionately inhabited by its active shareholder role with the major European listed companies. He had thought before everyone here many corporate governance problems and considered essential that the major professional investors be engaged to improve corporate behavior. A former Nestlé executive, he wanted to help for the creation of Proxinvest proxy advisory services and always supported our European consortium ECGS to foster a truly independent European view on listed companies.
As a correspondent member of the US Council of Institutional Investors and as an individual investor, not as an employee, he invited me in 1995 to join in Washington D.C. the group which created under his vision and that of Bill Crist, the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), a wonderful organization that has just celebrated its twentieth anniversary in London
With Lebanese nationality, he was raised by Jesuits in Cairo (Egypt). His passion was the European Mediterranean culture, he told me often that that he was probably of Jewish ancestry, had kept in Geneva a Christian faith and a French heart.
I called him on the phone before the London conference, and he seemed very tired. Actually, soon eigthy years, he was suffering from a bad cancer and Sylvia, his dear wife, told me that he did happily not have time to suffer. She said that his ashes will be scattered on the Geneva lake and thereby will return through France to his beloved Mediterranean Sea.
To Madame Baladi, to Alex his son, to his daughters Viviane and Sybille, all of us who loved André bring here our deep sympathy.
Pierre-Henri Leroy, Chairman of Proxinvest
