An era of French banking ended Wednesday with the resignation of Société Générale SA chairman Daniel Bouton. Bouton, who chaired SocGen for 12 years, was the architect of a failed offer for the then-Paribas SA a decade ago and went on to defeat a hostile bid from Banque Nationale de Paris SA in a three-way brawl. More recently, he presided over €4.9 billion ($6.4 billion) of losses run up by trader Jérôme Kerviel until January 2008. Under pressure, Bouton had last May renounced his role as CEO, ending a 15-year tenure. But his continued leadership of the board remained controversial, and earlier this year he found himself embroiled in a political row about stock options, which forced the bank into a very public climb-down. Bouton's resignation comes two days after the bank denied an article in French daily Libération about a €5 billion black hole resulting from a new "speculative fiasco."
In a statement Wednesday, Bouton said that "repeated attacks" against him over the past 15 months risked harming the bank, but he claimed to have made SocGen one of the finest banks in the euro zone. The board, led by CEO Frédéric Oudéa, will elect a new chairman on May 6. - Laura Board
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