After months of resisting pressure to resign over a €4.9 billion ($7.6 billion) trading loss, Société Générale’s investment banking chief, Jean-Pierre Mustier, is stepping aside — but not leaving the bank. SocGen announced late last month that Mustier will be replaced in October by Michel Pérétie, who had been chairman and chief executive of the international subsidiary of Bear Stearns Cos. before the firm was rescued through a $2.2 billion takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in March. Sources close to Mustier say the 47-year-old banker believed his reputation had been tarnished by the massive trading loss, which SocGen blamed on a rogue trader, and persuaded CEO Frédéric Oudea to hire Pérétie “to give the investment banking operation a fresh start.” Mustier will stay with the bank in an unspecified post. In April, Oudea replaced CEO Daniel Bouton, who remains as chairman of the bank. French politicians, including President Nicolas Sarkozy, have publicly called for top executives at SocGen to resign over the affair. Although Bear is hardly untarnished itself, Pérétie is widely credited with growing revenues from Europe and Asia from virtually nothing in 2000 to $1.2 billion last year.
