Sir Andrew Lewis, a former Vice Admiral of the Fleet, was in fine form. In common with many retired senior servicemen he had gone on to find himself a job in industry – and he very much enjoyed his term of office as Chairman of the Anglian Water authority – a Directorship which provided him with both an active interest and an attractive income for those later years.

"We have a great woman as leader of this country", Sir Andrew announced to his guest from the other side of the Channel, a little known 43 year old French woman by the name of Christine Morin-Postel, "and it is my privilege to welcome another." The gushing reference to Mrs. Thatcher, then in her tenth year of office as Prime Minister, could hardly have been more appropriate. For unbeknown to the naval man turned water boss, he was addressing his words to France’s own, equally resolute Dame de Fer. Eight weeks later Morin-Postel had acquired a majority interest in Anglian Water, part and parcel of her unremitting blitzkrieg on Britain’s newly privatised water utilities. In fact in the December of 1989, as head of the UK arm of the French utility group Lyonnaise des Eaux, she took stakes worth £120 million in three separate UK water companies, cutting a swathe through male-dominated board rooms.

Nor has there been any stopping her since. On the contrary, in 1995 she moved to Suez, where she took on the company’s troubled property portfolio. She swiftly took a £3 million charge and sold off a large chunk of bad debt, in a remarkable performance that impressed English and European analysts alike. Her promotion was to be moved by her mentor Gérard Mestrallet, the Suez boss, to Brussels where she now heads up the sprawling, 175-year-old holding company the Société Générale de Belgique – the only woman CEO of a major quoted company in Europe. She wasted little time in revealing her intentions vis-à-vis Belgium’s venerable ‘Old Lady’. "She must become a much younger woman", Morin-Postel says with a grin.

The Société Générale de Belgique once had stakes in more than 1,200 companies, accounting for no less than a third of Belgium’s entire industrial output. Its interests still include steel, mining, finance, electricity, auto parts and plastics. More recently four companies – Tractebel, the utilities group, Générale de Banque, Belgium’s biggest bank, Fortis, the Belgo-Dutch financial services group; and Union Minière, the mining and minerals group – made up the vast majority of its portfolio and profits. A decade after her highly successful shopping expedition for British water boards, the Morin-Postel whirlwind has continued apace – as she then set about marrying Fortis and Générale de Banque. Her objective? To create one of Europe’s top 10 institutions in financial services. Mission accomplished? Biensûr – in the June of this year. "Just to give you an idea of where we stand", she says in a softly-spoken, understated tone, "the market capitalisation of Fortis was slightly above that of the Deutsche Bank a week or so ago".

"I think that my experiences in the UK brought me a great deal and I have learned a lot from the Anglo-Saxon system of in terms of responsiveness to share-holders. My view is that if issues such as organisation, human resources, succession and so on are poorly treated – as if often the case in Latin countries - then no matter how good your product you are unlikely to be unable to reach your goals. Management must rotate – that’s also an unfamiliar concept on the Continent – not because of incompetence on any particular person’s part – merely because of changing situations."

Morin-Postel’s admiration of British business, however, does not lead her to give a blanket endorsement to Blair’s Britain – and she is particularly critical of the government’s long and tortuous pathway towards monetary union.

"I still consider that the UK represents a favourable environment in which to operate", she says, "because it provides stability. That said I see no reflection of the government’s hesitancy towards Europe in my dealings with business people. I am convinced that Britain will join the Euro sooner rather than later. The British are a pragmatic people – and business requires pragmatism above all else. There is a very strong pro-Europe lobby in Brussels and I can’t recall a single meeting with a British business man or woman in which serious doubts have been expressed about the wisdom of joining."

Christine Morin-Postel began her career at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Normandy and worked in two Paris investment groups before joining the Lyonnaise des Eaux in 1979. She has been with the group ever since. It was from Paris though that she embarked upon her steady climb – her undoubted intellect and forceful personality propelling her upward on her inexorable rise to the top. Not that its all been plain sailing, though, as Morin-Postel is the first to admit, recalling how disappointed she was that a major investment project which she had launched in Japan on behalf of the group proved to be an expensive lesson in Japanese culture rather than a genuine business opportunity. She then shrugs her shoulders philosophically, as the French do, before informing you ‘mais, c’est la vie’.

Nor has la vie of the Générale’s boss been without turmoil. "I don’t believe in all this talk about the super-women of today. My feeling is that if you want to be terribly successful on all fronts that something is likely to give. Each woman has to find her own balance, of course – but unfortunately something gave for me – and I found myself thrown into a messy divorce when my two children were young. And yet that in turn spurred me on to achieve more – because I wanted to give them the best possible education and to ensure that they succeeded. I didn’t set out with a conscious policy of having a ‘brilliant career’ – things just worked out that way."

One widely held view is that continental Europe is a much tougher nut for a businesswoman to crack. A false premise in Morin-Postel’s book.

"I sit on many boards, as you might expect. But I have to say that it’s still rare to see a woman in the top seat – and that includes the UK. And the same is true in my view in the United States, where the feminist movement is meant to be light year’s ahead – there really aren’t that many women either. I have not adopted a conscious policy of trying to be like a man – I am very much a woman, a mother, I like to entertain, shop and so on – I just try to be myself. What I don’t particularly appreciate, though, is having just one woman succeeding in a group. That has often happened to me, with the result that people tend to view you as if you are some kind of strange creature, an illicit intruder into their comfortable all-male world."

Outside of the boardroom and away from Brussels you are likely to find Morin-Postel relaxing at her remote Normandy farmhouse, where she also has a small stud farm. "But I am not a great one for mucking out, unlike your Princess Anne", she is anxious to point out. Once outside of the office – where she still regularly packs in a fifteen hour day – no phone-calls, faxes or e-mails allowed. Whereupon she might well head for her country kitchen and prepare her two much appreciated specialities cailles farcies and feuilleté de saumon.

"I have been given many nicknames", she concludes. "A lady Samurai when I was in Japan, the Iron Lady in the UK – Joan of Arc from time to time. I take it all with a huge pinch of salt. In this job you have to retain your sense of humour otherwise you are quite likely to end up going crazy. What makes me laugh though is that all of these analogies are male-perceptions of a woman in business – which is entirely ridiculous. It has never crossed my mind when dealing with men that they might consider themselves to be at war."

Time is up. Interview over. Another round of meetings – mergers and acquisitions on the agenda. Time for the boss of La Générale de Belgique to move on again. And apparently unaware as she does so of the latest nickname coined at her extravagant Rue Royale headquarters. ‘There she goes’, they whisper, ‘La Générale’.