SocGen to axe 1,800 jobs in France as chief steps up cost cuts – Financial Times
Société Générale said it would axe 1,800 jobs in France as chief executive Slawomir Krupa steps up efforts to cut stubbornly high costs.
Thursday’s announcement came after the lender told unions this week that it intended to reduce the number of positions in France by 1,800 out of a pool of 40,000 before the end of next year.
SocGen said the reduction in staff would come through natural attrition — the process of staff leaving voluntarily or retiring — rather than making redundancies.
One person familiar with SocGen’s plan said the bank wanted to move away from large formal programmes of job cuts that resulted in high redundancy payouts and often led to banks rehiring for some positions to fill gaps.
The CGT union was critical of the plan, however, saying the proposal as presented was “deficient” and should include measures such as voluntary redundancies. Unions have previously raised concerns about plans to offer staff options to move or retrain internally, which might in effect force some people out without compensation.
The cuts come as Krupa, who has led SocGen since 2023, presses ahead with a turnaround that has focused on strengthening the lender’s capital position and reducing costs.
As part of the overhaul, Krupa has cut staff and sold off a series of businesses, including the bank’s equipment leasing unit and private banking subsidiaries in the UK and Switzerland.
After years of setbacks following the 2008 financial crisis — including a €4.9bn rogue trading scandal and a €3.3bn loss on its exit from Russia — SocGen’s shares have rebounded as Krupa’s turnaround efforts have started to bear fruit.
SocGen, which is France’s third-largest bank by assets, was the best-performing European bank stock last year, and its share price has tripled since the beginning of 2024.
However, SocGen’s cost-to-income ratio — a metric closely watched by shareholders — stood at 63 per cent for the first nine months of 2025, a drop on the same period a year earlier, but still one of the highest levels among large European lenders.
Krupa told the FT last March that “nothing is sacred” when it came to operating the bank more efficiently, adding that he would target spending on IT and external consultants.
SocGen employs about 119,000 people across 62 countries. In France, where the latest job cuts are taking place, company filings indicated the lender had 53,000 staff at the end of 2024.
