Has a French bank actually fired someone for underperformance?
SocGen’s Q2 results are out. And while most reporting has focused on the feebleness of its retail performance or the moderate strength of its equities traders, one thing has mostly flown under the radar: the French bank may have dispensed with a senior executive whose division failed to make the cut.
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The person in question is the head of global banking and advisory, Demetrio Salorio, whom Bloomberg reported earlier as having stepped down from his role. We contacted both Salorio and SocGen for comment. Salorio didn't respond to our messages, and SocGen declined to elaborate.
Salorio may simply have retired after career spanning more than two decades. However, the division he runs hasn't performed all that well, despite SocGen's promise to boost its revenues.
SocGen’s global banking and advisory team reported a “broadly stable” quarter in comparison to Q2 2023, with “low ECM activity” in particular being noted. That isn’t good enough for the bank, unfortunately – SocGen’s peers on both sides of the Atlantic almost all posted substantial gains in both capital markets and M&A performance.
The 24% increase in equities revenue and 3% increase in fixed income & currencies revenues were also on par, at best, compared to peers. But you can’t blame Salorio for those.
Salorio was a 15-year veteran of SocGen, spending almost his entire career in the bank’s London office. He was finally pulled to Paris in May last year – the same month that Slawomir Krupa was named CEO. That’s not a coincidence - back then, French finance journal L’Agefi named Salorio as part of Slawomir’s “close guard”. It’s also worth noting that Salorio replaced Pierre Palmieri in his role, who went onto become Krupa’s deputy as CEO.
Krupa, more broadly, might come under fire for SocGen’s investment banking performance. During his first investor day for the bank, nearly a year ago, he outlined his plan: “more advisory, more fees, less capital intensity.” The first two are, rather clearly, struggling to fruition.
Aside from the revenues, Krupa has come under fire for cutting jobs rather callously, although most of the jobs cut haven’t really been cut but reassigned, “internally transferred”, and that sort of thing – details threshed out with the union. Previously, it’s offered extremely generous pay packages to get rid of people – up to €486k.
Maybe Salorio will get a pat on the back on the way out, too.
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