Enigmatic Macron aims for French presidency

Emmanuel Macron is a former investment banker and economy minister who hopes his meteoric rise will propel him to the French presidency aged just 39.

The reform-minded pro-EU candidate got a potential boost Wednesday when the veteran Francois Bayrou joined him in a centrist alliance that Macron hailed as a "turning point" in the campaign.

Macron's campaign events have been packed out for weeks and his pledge that he is "neither of the right nor the left" has gained currency in an election being watched around the world after the Brexit vote in Britain and Donald Trump's victory in the United States.

Polls show he is one of the three frontrunners, vying with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and conservative representative Francois Fillon.

But Macron, who has never won elected office, has faced accusations that his candidacy carries little substance.

- Dismissed gay rumours -

His personal life has also come under scrutiny.

Earlier this month, he poked fun at rumours he is gay despite being married to a woman he met when she was teaching at his high school. His wife Brigitte, who is 24 years older than him, is a highly visible presence in his campaign.

After a lucrative career as a banker for Rothschild, Macron served Socialist President Francois Hollande as an economic advisor before he was plucked from obscurity to join his cabinet.

In his two years in the government, he confronted Socialist orthodoxy head-on, questioning the 35-hour work week -- a totem of the French left.

Described as academically "brilliant" by his supporters, his business-friendly policies riled many leftist colleagues and activists.

During a public appearance in June last year, trade unionists pelted him with eggs.

But the swipes at the man dismissed by one veteran Socialist as a "start-up" politician have failed to dent his ambitions.

"If approval was a criterion in this country, nothing would ever get done," Macron said last year.

After week upon week of rising ratings, polls Tuesday showed Macron starting to slide -- on the very day he was granted an audience with British Prime Minister Theresa May in London.

The surveys showed him falling back to third in the first round of the election on April 23, behind Le Pen and Fillon, with the latter tipped to beat Le Pen in May's second-round runoff despite facing allegations he paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros for parliamentary work she may not have done.