By Julien Ponthus
PARIS (Reuters) -Buoyant activity across retail and investment banking helped Societe Generale report a smaller-than-expected loss in the second quarter as it absorbed a 3.3-billion-euro hit following the sale of its Russia unit.
The French bank, which gave no update on its current efforts to find a new chief executive, said on Wednesday it recorded a 1.48-billion-euro loss ($1.51 billion), while analysts on average had expected a loss of more than 2 billion euros.
Net banking income jumped just over 7 billion euros, about 600 million euros higher than expected, while operating expenses came in lower at 4.46 billion euros, the bank said.
Revenue rose 23.3% to 1.5 billion euros in the global markets unit, which saw equity trading grow by 7.5% to 833 million euros, while fixed income and currency activities increased 50% to 683 million euros.
French and international retail reported a rise in net banking income of 8.5% to 2.26 billion euros and 12.7% to 1.27 billion, respectively.
In May, Societe Generale closed the sale of its Russian business Rosbank to the Interros group, a firm linked to Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin.
The same month, Frederic Oudea took investors by surprise when he announced he would step down next year as the CEO after running the lender for 15 years.
Socgen’s results follow rival BNP Paribas, which reported a better-than-expected profit on Friday as business remained buoyant across business lines.
With a 28.3% fall so far in 2022, Socgen’s shares trail BNP Paribas, which lost 23.7%, while the broader European banking sector was down 20.5%.
(Reporting by Julien Ponthus and Matthieu Protard; Editing by Silvia Aloisi and Shounak Dasgupta)
