The French bank Société Générale has announced its intentions of cutting up to 1 600 jobs.
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French bank Société Générale, which employs close to 150 000 people world-wide, has announced its intentions of cutting up to 1 600 jobs globally. In France, the bank expects to cut around 700 jobs, relying mostly on employees voluntarily leaving or relocating them to other divisions of the company.
The bulk of these cuts, around 1 200, will be from its investment branch, with the goal of increasing profitability, after poor results in 2018.
This is not the first time the bank decides to reduce its workforce. In 2015, Société Générale revealed a plan to transform part of its banking activities, which included cutting 3 500 jobs and closing 500 agencies. This move is not unique, with other banks in Europe doing the same, such as Dutch bank ING, which announced in 2016 its intentions of cutting 7 000 jobs, 3 500 alone in Belgium, as well as closing dozens of agencies across the country. The main different between these reductions is, while ING was, and still is, largely profitable, Société Générale has been suffering from low margins and lower interest rates on consumer loans, decreasing its stock value by close to 50% since last year.
