Natixis Brand Guidelines: Natexis Plus Ixis in 2006, a Brushstroke N & a 2021 Delisting

A 1919 root and two parents.

Natixis was created in 2006, but its roots run back to the years after the First World War. BPCE’s history page calls the Crédit National, founded in 1919 to finance the repair of war damage and restart the economy, “one of the historic roots of Natixis.” The sources used for this guide do not say how the Crédit National operated during the occupation of 1940–1944.

The name came by way of a merger. French Wikipedia says Natexis was created in 1996 from the Crédit National and the Banque Française du Commerce Extérieur, or BFCE, its name joining “nat” from Crédit national and “ex” from commerce extérieur. The Banque Populaire group took a stake in 1997 and a majority in June 1998 after a friendly takeover bid, and in July 1999 the bank was renamed Natexis Banques Populaires, French Wikipedia says.

The other half came from the public sector. French Wikipedia says the Caisse des Dépôts founded CDC IXIS in 1999 to hold its competitive businesses, and that the Caisse Nationale des Caisses d’Epargne, the savings banks’ central body, took full control in 2004, after which it was known as IXIS. By the middle of the decade, then, each of France’s two big cooperative networks owned an investment bank.

Listed in 2006, withdrawn in 2021.

In 2006 the savings banks and the popular banks combined those investment banks, Ixis and Natexis Banques Populaires, and Natexis became Natixis, BPCE’s history page says. French Wikipedia dates its stock-market listing to 25 October 2006, with the two parents each holding about 35 percent; Le Figaro describes the bank as created and listed at the end of 2006.

The young bank met the financial crisis almost at once. In a results release of November 2007 it described its subprime risks as “limited,” and its share price then collapsed, Le Figaro reported. French Wikipedia says that in August 2009 the newly formed BPCE placed a guarantee over a ring-fenced portfolio of the bank’s assets. On 24 June 2021 the Paris criminal court found Natixis guilty of spreading misleading information in that November 2007 release and fined it; the bank’s lawyers said they were studying an appeal, Le Figaro, citing AFP, reported.

Regulators also acted on its subsidiaries. In September 2019 France’s market regulator, the AMF, sanctioned two asset-management subsidiaries over information given to fund holders and the handling of conflicts of interest, Le Figaro reported. In December 2019 the competition authority sanctioned the meal-voucher issuer Natixis Intertitres, with three other issuers, over a cartel between 2002 and 2018; the companies said they would appeal, the same paper reported.

French Wikipedia says Natixis joined the CAC 40 index in September 2010 and left it in 2011. Its life as a listed company ended in 2021. BPCE, which owned about 70.7 percent when its offer opened on 4 June, announced in July that it held more than 90 percent, and the remaining shares were withdrawn from the Paris exchange on 21 July 2021, according to BPCE and Le Figaro. In its release of that month BPCE described Natixis as the vehicle for the group’s global businesses in asset management, corporate and investment banking and payments; French Wikipedia says the bank was then present in nearly 40 countries.

How French banks present themselves.

French banks tend to present themselves through a small set of strong signals: a confident wordmark, a simple symbol and one or two colours used with discipline. Green, red and blue recur across the sector. Crédit Agricole is sometimes called “la banque verte,” the green bank, for its farming roots, while Société Générale has used a red and black square since 1990, according to French Wikipedia. The result is a high street where a colour can identify a bank before its name is read.

Many of the largest groups are mutualist or cooperative, built from local and regional banks owned by their members, and their identities often carry that structure. A national mark sits above regional names, and branch signage, city photography and local news pages speak to a particular town or département. The same brand has to work on a village branch, a city tower and a phone screen.

Online, the pages follow everyday needs: current accounts and cards, home loans, insurance, savings and investment, with separate areas for professionals, farmers and companies. Mobile apps now carry much of the relationship, and app screens, notifications and onboarding flows have become part of the visual identity as much as the logo on a branch front.

Sponsorship gives these brands a public stage. Crédit Agricole has backed football’s Coupe de France since 1974, according to English Wikipedia, and Société Générale says it has sponsored the French Rugby Federation since 1987; culture, music and disability sport also feature. Annual and integrated reports complete the picture: long documents in which the group’s colours, typefaces and photography are applied with the same care as on a campaign poster, and a useful place to study how each identity holds together.

From two lozenges to one brushstroke.

Natixis’s identity followed its ownership, French Wikipedia says. Until 2009 its logo was two lozenges, a blue one for the Banque Populaire and a red one for the Caisse d’Epargne. In December 2009 they gave way to a stylised “N” drawn like a brushstroke, recalling a handwritten signature, in a purple of the same tone as the new BPCE logo, a colour meant to merge the red and the blue. From 2017 the brand line “Beyond Banking” accompanied the logo.

Today the name lives on in BPCE’s global businesses. BPCE describes Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking as serving companies, financial institutions and investors through five business lines, from global markets to mergers and acquisitions, with teams in nearly 30 countries, and lists sector specialisms that run from low-carbon energy and critical metals to real estate, telecoms and technology; it says the bank aims to align its financing portfolios with a net-zero trajectory by 2050. French Wikipedia says Natixis Investment Managers, created in 2004 and based in Boston and Paris, is the holding company for affiliates including Loomis, Sayles & Company, Harris Associates, Mirova and Ostrum Asset Management; Natixis Interépargne handles employee savings, and Natixis Wealth Management was formerly Banque Privée 1818. In January 2025 BPCE and the insurer Generali announced talks to combine their asset managers, including Natixis Investment Managers, and on 11 December 2025 they ended those talks, according to English Wikipedia. Natixis was also among the group companies named in BPCE’s Premium Partnership of Paris 2024 from 2019, BPCE says.

For a design guide, Natixis shows how a mark can record a merger: two coloured lozenges for two parents, then one colour that mixes them. Compare BPCE, its parent, and BNP Paribas, another French banking group. For this guide we use a violet and a slate with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Natixis’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.