SG Private Banking Outlines French Regional Ambitions

Stephen Harris

11 June 2008

The trend to expand wealth management operations throughout the regions of the UK is being extended to the French regions by Société Générale.

SG Private Banking, the wealth management arm of Société Générale Group, is targeting high net worth individuals outside Paris by opening a regional private banking centre in Bordeaux and by linking up wth the group’s retail bank.

The move will focus on helping entrepreneurs, company directors and members of the professions to sell or pass on their business. These high net worth individuals will now have access locally to the private bank’s tailor-made investment solutions and financial services.

The new regional centre in Bordeaux is headed by Henri Felzine and offers the full range of SG Private Banking services to wealthy clients in the “Greater South West” region of France - Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrénées, Poitou-Charentes and Limousin. The group’s retail banking network has 270 branches in this region.

Further openings are planned in Marseille and Lyon by September 2008, followed by Lille, Strasbourg and Rennes in 2009.