SOCIETE Generale chief executive officer Frederic Oudea said he will leave the lender next year, bringing to a close a 15-year reign that spans the great financial crisis to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Oudea, the longest-serving CEO of a major European bank, told shareholders of his surprise decision not to seek reappointment during SocGen’s annual general meeting late Tuesday (May 17) in Paris. The process to select a new CEO will be completed by next year, the bank said in a statement.

“I have thought a lot about the different options,” Oudea, 58, said at the meeting. “Keeping in mind in priority the group’s interest and the stakes of the next years,” he said he notified the board that he would not run to renew his term in 2023.

Since he was named CEO in April 2008, Oudea has overseen a decline in the bank’s valuation of almost two thirds, though that mirrors the fate of the broader sector. What distinguishes Oudea is his longevity in a turbulent time for the industry - Barclays and Deutsche Bank each had 5 men serve as CEO during Oudea’s tenure.  

SocGen shares rose 2.4 per cent at 9.18 am in Paris trading on Wednesday, the biggest gainer in an index of European lenders.

SocGen has seen a roller-coaster performance of late. The bank suffered steep losses at the onset of the pandemic, then rebounded from its first losing year in decades with a record profit last year. Now it faces a hit amid the fallout from sanctions against Russia, where it is one of the most exposed lenders. 

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Last month, it agreed to sell its local unit Rosbank to Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin, with an expected hit of some 3.1 billion euros (S$4.5 billion). SocGen was the first major European lender to announce the sale of its Russian assets in the wake of the invasion, though peers Raiffeisen Bank International and UniCredit are both considering an exit.

Last year’s record profit was aided by a resurgent equities trading unit. The results helped Oudea demonstrate his grip on the bank after the previous year’s trading meltdown added to persistent chatter that his time was nearing a close.

For years, Oudea’s commitment to investment banking had led to criticism that the executive was too focused on businesses that led to lower returns. Soured equities-derivatives bets darkened the cloud over him, as did the sale of SocGen’s stake in Amundi, now the top asset-manager in Europe. 

Top contenders

In late 2019, an initiative from the board of directors to find a successor to Oudea leaked to the press at a time when the CEO was engaged in a major restructuring. At a board meeting taking place at the headquarters of Rosbank, the Russian unit, Oudea demonstrated his command of the lender, by threatening the panel that oversees him with consequences for the affront, Bloomberg News reported last year. 

Among the names in contention for the top job now that Oudea has chosen his own point of departure is Slawomir Krupa, a veteran of the bank who heads its corporate and investment banking operations. Krupa joined the group in 1996 in its internal auditing body, and climbed within the CIB unit to eventually become CEO of Societe Generale Americas in January 2016. 

Another internal candidate is Sebastien Proto, who heads the bank’s French retail operations, and oversees the merger of the Societe Generale and Credit du Nord networks. Like Oudea, Proto graduated from the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration and started his career within the Inspection des Finances - the French government’s auditing and supervisory body. He joined SocGen in 2018 as head of group strategy.

The board also will probably consider the 2 deputy CEOs, Philippe Aymerich and Diony Lebot, who have each spent more than 30 years at the bank.

Aymerich, who supervises SocGen’s French and international retail banking activities, joined the bank’s international inspection body in 1987. Lebot, who is responsible for the bank’s ESG strategy among other duties, joined the structured finance unit in 1986. She was recently the bank’s chief risk officer, and oversaw remediation programmes related to proceedings in the US, until Oudea took over that responsibility late last year.

The bank’s other deputy general manager, Gaelle Olivier, was appointed to her role in January 2022. Olivier, who serves as chief operating officer, supervising the bank’s resources and coordinating the IT, digital transformation and innovation functions, previously headed the bank’s Asia Pacific unit. She spent most of her career at French insurance giant AXA. BLOOMBERG