SocGen's BNP hire hasn't helped trading revenues, but that's ok
SocGen’s first quarter 2025 results were released yesterday. On the face of it, things didn’t go very well – sales & trading revenue in particular ranged from “bad” to “average”. In reality, however, things aren’t actually *that* dire. Slawomir Krupa, SocGen’s CEO and former investment banking chief, probably sleeps just fine at night.
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Krupa had a mandate to change the bank from a lumbering French bank to a nimble international one, and part of that plan was bringing in a big shot: Francisco Oliveira, BNP’s former global head of macro and credit trading, to be SocGen’s co-head of global markets, and global head of fixed income and currencies.
Oliveira joined in January. SocGen's fixed income and currencies (FIC), however, misfired in Q1 of 2025, posting a 2.4% fall in revenue between Q1 of 2024 and then. It’s poor compared to the growth seen in other global banks, particularly European ones. One would imagine that Oliveira is as stressed as a trader can be, but reality is more complicated than that.
As Krupa pointed out in the bank’s analyst call, SocGen doesn’t structure its credit operations like other banks do; asset-backed products and securitization are “largely accounted for” in the global banking business. Ergo, success would not show in the FIC numbers.
Still, there are questions to be asked. SocGen is “overweight on rates,” in Krupa’s own words, and macro has been a standout for teams so far this year: Bank of America, for instance, credited a strong macro performance for an 8% upswing in revenue. SocGen in turn said that “lower client activity” in rates had hamstrung revenues.
The other side of macro trading is FX, which is more Oliveira’s domain, and here the bank did perform. “Good performance in developed and emerging markets forex [foreign exchange]”, due to increased volatility. Maybe Oliveira is happy after all.
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