Expert view points

Following Chinese President Xi’s first foreign visit in 2019 and the signing of €40 billion business deals in France, Pierre-Yves Bonnet shared his views on what’s next for Sino-French business development.

Demography will dominate the conversation in Africa, rising above talk of governance, external debt and a need to realise the potential of agribusiness.

Societe Generale processes international payments via SWIFT gpi, which is becoming the new standard in this area. The Head of Cash Clearing Services explains the major strides allowed by gpi, which meets the banks' expectations for these payments. Societe Generale is one of the leading banks on this standard and participates in the improvement works.

As Chairman of Financial Sponsor Coverage, Scott Phillips has helped steer the Societe Generale Americas business supporting Private Equity for over two decades and has worked with PE firms across the globe. As the industry continues to evolve into something that looks and acts far different than it did at its beginning, we took the opportunity to ask Scott...

The argument that returns from ESG-linked investments are worth more than a second look is playing out to the extent that buying into the sustainable finance model is nudging its way towards the mainstream.

A prominent role in hedging the latest billion dollar-plus Eurobond for Ivory Coast and assisting in the development of domestic bond markets in Africa mark Societe Generale's continued commitment to advancing financial markets in the region.

Lyxor has listed its first exchange-traded fund (ETF) in Sweden, a Green Bond ETF that started life on 21 February 2017 as the world’s first of its kind. The new listing on the Nasdaq-OMX Exchange of an ETF that has €54.2m of assets under management marks an expansion in the region that has included moving office into a local Societe Generale branch that was...

When ALD Automotive, a leading worldwide vehicle leasing company, raised EUR 500m through a Positive Impact Bond in October 2018 to buy ‘clean energy’ cars, it took a pioneering approach by selecting the cars with the lowest CO2 emissions over their entire lifecycles from their manufacturing to recycling.

Two large loan facilities completed in December 2018 marked the first-time use of environmental, social governance (ESG) ratings in loan agreements by Austrian and German borrowers, in the form of a five-year, €500m revolving credit facility for Verbund and a same-term, €1.5 billion revolver for Henkel, respectively. Societe Generale was the ESG coordinator...

It’s an irony that although most ETFs are passively managed, they are at the center of an upsurge in shareholder activism around corporate sustainability. Not only are ETFs dedicated to environmental, social and governance (ESG) themes gathering assets fast, but also ETFs in general are stepping up their engagement with companies.

As 2019 gets rolling amid a backdrop of rebounding equity markets and continued geo-political sturm und drang we thought it would be a good time to ask Societe Generale’s head of U.S. Equity Capital Markets David Getzler what he expects to see impacting U.S. stock issuance in the year ahead.

EU revised shareholder rights directive and its impacts on general meetings

Placing impact at the heart of business models, public tendering and financial analysis can help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

To “do good by doing well” is an increasingly popular quest for investors. There is already significant empirical evidence that sustainable investing can lead to outperformance. And the signs are that digital analysis of how well companies behave, and the sustainability of their goods and services, might be about to confirm that with greater certainty.

In just 10 years, the green and social bond market has gone from nothing to become a part of mainstream finance. It has funded projects ranging from renewable energy, to low carbon buildings and energy efficiency. Yet the bulk of its activities have been in the more developed economies, while the area of greatest need is the developing world and specifically...