The banking group Société Générale announced, this Monday, February 5, the elimination of around 900 positions at its headquarters, “without forced departures”, or around 5% of the workforce at its headquarters, as part of a plan to reduce its costs already announced. “The objective is to group and pool certain activities and functions, to remove hierarchical layers to simplify decision-making processes” and to “resize certain teams,” explained the group in a press release.
This job reduction plan is the first by Slawomir Krupa, general director of the bank since May 2023. Its scale is almost double compared to the information published on January 19 by the Bloomberg agency, which reported a plan providing for more 500 positions eliminated.
A target of 1.7 billion euros in savings
The bank 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 Slawomir Krupa, which was poorly received on the stock market.
According to the newspaper The echoeswhich revealed on Saturday the scale of this plan, the central functions of the group in La Défense, near Paris, and IT are the main ones affected by the job cuts.
Submitted on Monday for consultation with staff representative bodies, the job cuts will be made “through internal mobility, activity transitions or voluntary departures”, indicated Société Générale. Société Générale employs some 56,000 people in France, out of 117,500 worldwide, according to its reference document.