French lender Societe Generale, looking to tap surging wealth in Asia, aims to enter China's nascent private banking market as part of the firm's broader push into the booming country, a top executive said.
SocGen expects to announce as soon as next week its plans to seek domestic incorporation in a country that only recently allowed foreign banks to offer local currency services, he said. "Our intention is to continue to enter large domestic markets, and of course what is next is probably China," Daniel Truchi, global chief executive of SG Private Banking, told Reuters in an interview.
SocGen, the sixth-most valuable bank in the Euro zone, also intends to enter the retail and corporate and investment banking markets in China, pending regulatory approval, Truchi said. "This intention and decision within SG group will be hopefully converted into an application soon," added Truchi, who was appointed to the global role in January and was previously head of SocGen's private banking business in Asia, a region he still oversees.