Brussels - Societe Generale de Belgique, known among Belgians as the Old Lady, came to the end of her days on Friday.
The 181-year-old holding company, once champion of Belgium's industrial revolution, the issuer of its bank notes and the financier of the brutal colonisation of the Congo, lost her name and identity in a merger with a larger energy holding company.
In the presence of 10 people and a public notary at Societe Generale's ornate offices in Brussels, she was unceremoniously voted out of existence at an extraordinary shareholders meeting.
"Today, it is the end by name," a company spokesperson said.
As part of a restructuring at her parent, French utility giant Suez, Societe Generale merges with Belgian energy group Tractebel, trading in her name for that of Suez-Tractebel, the new name of the combined holding company. Through this new holding company, Suez controls Electrabel, Belgium's dominant power utility.
Etienne Davignon, Belgium's foremost captain of industry who acted as the company's honourary chairman, spoke well of her role in the country's development but with little sentimentality.
"Nostalgia never brought consolation or strength," he told the local daily La Libre Belgique. " nothing can change the historic reality that made Societe Generale a first-class actor in the future and development of the country."
But this doyenne of Belgian industry, which once owned a third of the economy, was a ghost of herself for the past 15 years.
Before today's merger, the holding company had shrunk to a staff of about 60 with Tractebel as her only asset.
She lost her footing in 1988 when she was - in the eyes of most Belgians - assaulted by Italian tycoon Carlo De Benedetti, who sought to increase his 18.6 percent stake.
De Benedetti announced his plan to buy a bigger stake by sending a box of chocolates to the company's boss.
A takeover battle ensued, with a desperate Societe Generale finding a suitor in Suez, who was glad to take her hand, given her control of Belgium's gas and power assets through Tractebel.
A decade later, Suez bought the rest of Societe Generale that it did not already own.
By that time, she had gone into a coma, historian Jean-Louis Moreau told La Libre Belgique.
Founded in 1822 by Dutch King William of Orange for the Belgian provinces under his reign, Societe Generale is eight years older than Belgium itself.
From the outset, she played a crucial role in pushing the country into the industrial age.
In 1837, she financed the mechanisation of the Flemish textile industry.
Societe Generale stopped issuing bank notes when the central bank was created in 1850, a duty she took up again in World War 1 when the occupying Germans prevented the bank from doing it.
Her investments set the foundation for the Belgian economy, with stakes in such corporate stalwarts as Union Miniere - renamed Umicore - and CMB.
"At the height of its power, the Old Lady controlled 800 of the largest companies in Belgium and the Congo," said De Financieel Economische Tijd, a business daily.
Societe Generale financed King Leopold II's pillaging of the Congo. Union Miniere ran the copper mines before they were nationalised.
"Up until the end of World War 2, Societe Generale was a state within the Belgian state," said De Tijd. - Reuters