Europe 1 // Credits: BENJAMIN POLGE / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 1:59 p.m., February 3, 2024

According to "Echos", the Société Générale banking group is preparing to announce to its employees on Monday that it will cut "around 900 positions". The group's central functions located in Defense and the IT department should be mainly targeted.

The banking group Société Générale is preparing to announce to its employees on Monday that it will eliminate "around 900 positions", according to an article in the newspaper Les Echos published on Saturday, on which the bank did not wish to comment. The group's central functions in La Défense, near Paris, and IT should be mainly affected, according to the economic daily. Société Générale employs some 56,000 people in France, out of 117,500 worldwide, according to its reference document.

If confirmed, this job reduction plan would be the first for Slawomir Krupa, general director of the bank since May 2023. And its scale would be almost doubled compared to the information published on January 19 by the Bloomberg agency, which had reports a plan to eliminate more than 500 positions. Mr. Krupa seeks to relaunch the bank after fifteen checkered years under the leadership of Frédéric Oudéa, punctuated by crises and scandals (consequences of the Kerviel affair, indictment of the bank in the affair Panama Papers or even a search last year at the headquarters on the "cumcum" file...).

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A target of 1.7 billion euros in savings by 2026

The bank thus made public on September 18 a target of 1.7 billion euros in savings by 2026 (compared to 2022), during the presentation of the bank's strategic orientations by Mr. Krupa, poorly received in Sotck exchange. This figure includes savings already announced, such as those generated by the merger between the two retail banking networks in France, Société Générale and Crédit du Nord, and by the takeover of Leaseplan by the automobile leasing subsidiary ALD.

The merger of the Société Générale and Crédit du Nord networks is accompanied by a significant reduction in the number of agencies - 1,450 agencies in 2025 compared to 2,100 five years earlier - and 3,700 positions eliminated, an "effort" distributed between 2023 (around 30%), 2024 (50%), 2025 (20%), without forced departure.