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Societe Generale (SocGen) aims to open a large number of branches in China and find a strategic partner to help it expand into the retail market, the French bank's China head, Marc Poirier, said on March 15.
The comments underscore SocGen's desire to muscle up in China, much like lenders HSBC and Standard Chartered, despite losing out to Citigroup in a $3 billion battle for southern China's Guangdong Development Bank late last year.
"We are on the cusp of this big organic growth push, but at the same time we are still looking for a potential acquisition," Poirier told Reuters.
"We are going to expand dramatically, probably on the same scale as our competitors," he said of SocGen's branch plans, which reaffirm its intention to make China a springboard for its first drive into mainstream retail banking in Asia for a century. Organic growth apart, Poirier said SocGen remained intent on buying into a local bank, which would let it make more rapid inroads into the retail sector and so capture some of China's $2 trillion in household savings.
"We cannot do a small thing. We are equipped now to do a major investment. The question is to find the right target," Poirier said, declining to elaborate.
SocGen, the euro zone's sixth-most valuable lender, applied in early February to incorporate as a local bank in Beijing.
Regulatory approval to incorporate, expected this year, would allow the bank to act on its plans to open branches to offer private banking and a broad array of retail services, Poirier said.
A number of foreign banks, faced with mature markets at home, remain on the prowl for acquisitions to tap into China's giddy growth. But attractive targets are few and far between and prices are much higher than they were two years ago. SocGen now has about 200 people in China. Most are working in corporate and investment banking, with around 50 in asset management, equipment financing and automobile leasing.
The head of the bank's financing operations in Asia, Jackson Cheung, said SocGen also had ambitious plans in other areas.
The bank aimed to triple its revenues from financing and capital-raising in Asia in the next three years, riding a wave of trade and investment flows driven largely by natural resources.

Copyright Reuters, 2007

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