The headquarters of Société Générale in La Défense.

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Lionel Urman / SIPA

With the economic crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, the French banking landscape is restructuring.

The Société Générale will merge its network of banks with that of Crédit du Nord, we learned from union sources on Sunday.

The decision was taken during boards of directors of the two banks which were held this weekend, said two union sources, confirming information from Les

Echos

.

The territorial presence of Crédit du Nord

The decision is not a surprise.

Shaken by the Covid-19 crisis, Société Générale announced in September that it was considering the merger of the two networks, a turning point that would see the birth of a new retail bank with 10 million customers.

Until now, the group had organized its retail activity in France on three networks, each benefiting from a large level of autonomy: the network under its name, that of Crédit du Nord and the online bank Boursorama.

In this configuration, Société Générale claimed a very strong business base with individual clients and large companies, where Crédit du Nord's strength lay in its territorial presence and its links with SMEs and professionals.

The new structure would benefit from "the quality of the two business assets of nearly 9 million individual customers and 1 million professional and business customers", as well as "the strong complementarity of the two networks in terms of expertise and presence. geographical ”, explained the group in September.

Concerned unions

This prospect has raised concerns among unions, who fear many job cuts due to duplication between the two structures.

The Credit du Nord CFDT estimated in September that the two banks could lose at least “between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs”.

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  • Economy

  • Covid 19

  • Coronavirus

  • Societe Generale

  • Bank

  • Merger