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While the importance of the state-owned Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations in the significant increase of urban developments in France from the 1950s is recognised, the involvement of another financial group, the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas (better known simply as ‘Paribas’), is much less so. During the interwar period, Paribas, a major private sector bank, participated in the birth of the ‘local mixed economy sector’comprising companies combining private and public ownership. The archives of Paribas show that, after the war, it embarked on a frenetic developmentof subsidiaries specialised in real estate. Among these was a pioneering network of municipal or inter-municipal SEMs dealing first with housing construction, before some went on to specialise in urban development. This network piloted urban planning projects for municipalities in more than twenty cities of very different sizes although the majority were right-wing. As the case studies of Vélizy, Dijon and Tours show, the strength of this network was that it was very integrated and could rely on other Paribas subsidiaries, in particular construction or planning consultant firms.