Societe Generale Research Articles

Financial Digital Management Transformation of Brokers: A Case Study Based on Societe Generale Securities

Purpose - Building a digital enterprise is a fundamental strategic direction for today’s enterprises, and corporate financial management needs to be transformed accordingly. This study aims to explore the financial digital transformation undertaken by Societe Generale Securities, summarizing the essential steps involved in this transformative process. The relevant research provides a theoretical guidance for the digital transformation of enterprises. Most of China’s existing enterprise financial systems are still nascent in digital construction.
 Design/Methodology/Approach - This study uses Societe Generale’s case analysis methodology to delve into the company’s key steps and initiatives for digital transformation and the implications for financial management innovation.
 Findings - Through an in-depth analysis of the digitalization system of Societe Generale Securities, this study endeavors to discover the path of and steps in a financial digital transformation of large enterprises in the era of new technology. The study reveals that innovation in management practices is the foundation of digital transformation, enabling the integration of enterprise management accounting applications. Moreover, digital construction should always align with enterprise strategy.
 Research Implications - The three steps of Societe Generale Securities’ financial digital transformation provide guidance for other enterprises to implement digital transformation. This study shows that enterprise information construction is not a one-off process. It should be in line with the strategic stage and business environment, planned, and gradually implemented.

Energy transition metals and global sentiment: Evidence from extreme quantiles

This paper examines the quantile connectedness between energy transition metals, defined as those needed for the transition from dirty to clean energy, and global economic and financial sentiment benchmarks. Using data for five metals, - namely, aluminum, cobalt, copper, lithium, and nickel, - and two sentiment indices over 2019–2022, we empirically demonstrate that the US Economic Sentiment Index (ESI) and Societe Generale Global Sentiment Index (SGGSI) are found to be net receivers of shocks across all four extreme quantiles: 0.05, 0.10, 0.90, and 0.95. Thus, it is shown that energy transition metal markets impact global sentiment, especially during stressed periods. We also document that the total connectedness/risk spillovers between clean energy metals and sentiment indices exhibit substantial increase in the extreme quantiles. Moreover, we provide empirical evidence that there is asymmetry in spillovers over time and across quantiles.

Status of SOC Development at Chaozhou Three-Circle

Chaozhou Three-Circle (Group) Co., Ltd. (CCTC) is a leading company in developing and manufacturing of electronic and ceramic components. Since more than 19 years ago, CCTC has been focusing on SOFC R&D and manufacturing, covering the complete value chain from powder to power. Based on anode-supported cell technology (ASC in fuel cell mode), the latest C2-stack in planar design using metallic interconnect exhibits a high efficiency of more than 69% (DC, LHV) at 1.5 kW. Long-term stack tests using pipeline natural gas have been conducted for 20,000 hours, with low degradation rates of below 0.4%/kh. In 2022, several 35 kW SOFC CHP systems were demonstrated with C2 stacks, which showed stable performance over 3,000 hours of operation. According to the verification test by Societe Generale de Surveillance S.A., the net AC efficiency of the system reached 64.1%, and the total efficiency was up to 91.2% after 1,000 hours of continuous operation. In parallel to the continuous progressing in SOFC, optimization in cells and stack designs dedicated for SOEC applications were also conducted in recent years. The status of both SOFC and SOEC development at CCTC will be presented.

Training audit: establishing excellence in the company's training process: Bank Societe Generale Group

Training allows employees to better integrate into the workforce, maintain their employment and develop their skills. The systems put in place aim to ensure the employability of the employee, his or her ability to keep or obtain a job. The employee has a right to training. Training plays an important role in the development of human resource skills in any organization. In fact, this lever, which must necessarily affect all aspects in a company and all its functions, must be generalized to all employees, regardless of their level of knowledge or position in the hierarchy. Training is a tool that allows the company to effectively confront an increasingly unpredictable and restrictive environment. The importance of training systems in organizations is such that decision makers regularly commission audits of their companies' training systems to identify strengths and weaknesses and suggest necessary adjustments. This presentation is an opportunity to demonstrate the concept of a training audit and to present a synthesis of examples of how this approach has been applied in the Societe Generale Group as a measure of excellence in the training process.

Defense production of the mining and metallurgical complex of the late imperial economy of Russia (on the example of the functioning of the Bryansk plant society)

Based on the analysis, most of the documents previously not entered into a wide scientific circulation of documents from the leading profile archives of Russia, the history of the defense production of the mining and metallurgical complex of the late improper economy of Russia was reconstructed, on the example of the formation and development of a large domestic mining and metallurgical society – the Bryansk plant. The article covers the activities of the Bryansk society to fulfill the orders of domestic defense departments, its progressive technical device is described, the specific features of attracting foreign investment funds are disclosed (primarily from the French company «Societe Generale») for its production needs, as well as a number of other important scenes were analyzed. In the final conclusion, there is a noticeable role of the mining and metallurgical Association of the Bryansk factory in providing the army and the fleet with new defense products.

Effect of Managerial Competence on Value-Based Financial Performance of Banks

This study investigates the connections between managerial competency MC) and value-based financial performance (EVA, MVA and CVA) of acquirer banks listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (hereafter: GSE). Correlational research design was employed for the study. Four banks: Ecobank Ghana Ltd, Access Bank Ghana Ltd, Societe Generale Ghana Limited and GCB Bank Limited were chosen for the study. Multiple regression model using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was employed for the data analyses. The findings suggest that MC has a positive and significant effect on value-based financial performance proxied by economic value added (EVA), market value added (MVA) and cash value added (CVA). The MCs required for merger and acquisition success in the banking sector comprised of Leadership Skills, Technical Skills, Fraud Risk Management Skills and Customer Value Management Skills. The study deepens literature on the requisite MC (intra-personal skills, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, technical/business skills, fraud risk management skills, customer value management skills) for merger and acquisition success. Should there be increased shareholder value after a merger or acquisition, managerial competence plays a cardinal role. Traditionally, this value-based model provides guidelines or framework for staff in management evaluation for selection, development and performance management. these skills can be considered as the basis for management development programs as the skills needed to be effective can be developed in adults. the study was limited to only four acquirer banks listed on GSE, further study should be conducted on all listed banks on GSE to test the validity and operability of the value-based model of MC.

Mapping the risks of mergers and acquisitions: the case of the takeover of Marocaine Vie by the Societe Generale Group

Mapping the risks of mergers and acquisitions: the case of the takeover of Marocaine Vie by the Societe Generale Group

ARIMA vs. MACHINE LEARNING IN TERMS OF EQUITY MARKET FORECASTING

Through this paper we aimed to develop a comparison between ARIMA, Prophet, KNN and Neural Networks in terms of stock prices forecasting. After reviewing the literature, we noticed that there is a plethora of studies that address this problem of forecasting, but very few have made comparisons that include ARIMA, machine learning, but also the Prophet forecasting model developed by Facebook, which brought interesting results for certain data series. Based on methodologies validated by other authors, we compared these models in our paper and we sought to obtain promising results regarding performance evaluation. The comparison was made in-sample, the training period being 01/01/2010 – 31/07/2021, but also out-of-sample (01/08/2021 – 31/10/2021). The study was performed for Societe Generale’s stock, using daily observations. Statistical loss functions such as RMSE, MPE, MAPE, MAE, and ME were used for comparison. The results indicated an outperformance of Neural Networks, both in-sample and out-of-sample, this model being on the 1st place according to the aggregated score. It is also noteworthy that the ARIMA model was in second place in-sample, ahead of KNN, but for out of sample these two algorithms changed their positions. On the other hand, the Prophet algorithm performed the weakest, both in-sample and out of sample. Also, we must underlie that all four algorithms had a clear tendency to overestimate the price of Societe Generale, according to the results of the statistical loss functions ME and MPE. Finally, it should be noted that the results were consistent with what other authors found out, especially for the out-of-sample period, where the machine learning models performed best.

THE CONCEPT OF PUBLIC POLICY IN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION: REFUSAL OF THE RECOGNITION AND ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN ARBITRAL AWARDS EX OFFICIO IN UZBEKISTAN

This article deals with the themes of the execution of foreign arbitral awards in the Republic of Uzbekistan in the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. The discussions will be carried out based on the relevant laws of Uzbekistan in the field of international arbitration, as well as by exemplifying of “Somportex Ltd. vs Philadelphia Chewing Gum Corp,” “Parsons & Whittemore Overseas Co., Inc. v Societe Generale de I’Industrie du Papier (RAKTA),” “United World Ltd. Inc. v Krasny Yakor,” and “Richardson v Mellish.

Empirical Study on Weather Resistance of White Artificial Stones in Subtropical Island Climate

White building components, whether decorative or the overall structure, are susceptible to extreme weathering conditions, which affect the durability of the building’s external surface. In particular, white natural stone materials can provide buildings with beauty, durability, and sustainability, but this beauty is affected by key factors determining their weather resistance, namely physical properties such as porosity and acid and alkali resistances. As indicated by a past study, marble used as the exterior wall of a building in a similar environment will exhibit tarnishing after six months of weathering. Taiwan is a subtropical island, so the weather resistance of building materials to this environment is worthy of attention. As pointed out by the study, raw stone materials containing zirconium and silica can have greater weather resistance, do not easily change color, and possess good stress resistance properties. Focusing on this, this study attempted to identify stone materials with such compositions and sent samples to SGS (Societe Generale de Surveillance S.A., New Taipei City, Taiwan) for testing of weather resistance. This paper uses Spanish artificial stones for the study and observes the changes in the surface cleanliness on two buildings in Yilan County and Taipei in Taiwan after exposure to sun and rain. The experiments were conducted over two years. The study results showed that the artificial stones displayed no change in outward appearance under both rainy and acid rain environments. In Yilan, construction of an exterior wall was carried out in February 2018. The exterior wall used the white artificial stone directly from the manufacturer, and the black artificial stone with added paint for stone protection. After two months, the black artificial stone covered with paint exhibited a change in color and stains appeared on the surface, while the white artificial stone not covered with paint maintained the same cleanliness after two years. In Taipei, white Spanish artificial stone was used for the exterior wall of an entire building block in February 2020. After the frame was dismantled in September 2020, the color was found to be unaffected, being as pure white as it was when new. Therefore, this study selected Spanish artificial stone for the design of a building’s exterior wall, as the cleanliness of the stone surface is not affected and it has good applicability in rainy and acid rain island environments.

Hedge Accounting: International Financial Reporting Standards e Normas do Banco Central do Brasil

Em 2008 foi anunciada a revisão do International Accounting Standard (IAS 39), segmentada em três etapas principais, a classificação e mensuração dos instrumentos financeiros, a introdução de uma nova metodologia para o cálculo de perda incorrida (impairment) e hedge accounting. Esse projeto resultou na publicação, em julho de 2014, na nova norma dos Instrumentos Financeiros, a IFRS 9. O objetivo deste estudo é analisar os principais impactos trazidos pela IFRS 9, frente aos normativos contábeis do Plano Contábil das Instituições do Sistema Financeiro Nacional (COSIF), no que tange à contabilização de hedge accounting. Realizou-se a análise dos normativos locais e internacionais, e de modo complementar um estudo de caso, por meio da análise das demonstrações contábeis brasileiras no Generally Accepted Accounting Principles do Banco Société Générale do Brasil, com data-base de 30 de junho de 2017. Os resultados da pesquisa mostram que, com as alterações trazidas pelo IFRS 9, maior detalhamento das informações sobre o hedge accounting passou a ser exigido, o que impacta consideravelmente o conteúdo e o formato atual das notas explicativas. Este estudo tem como principal contribuição a demonstração de que os requerimentos locais das divulgações dos instrumentos financeiros precisam de adequações.

Large Bets and Stock Market Crashes

For five stock market crashes, we compare price declines with pre- dictions from market microstructure invariance. Predicted price de- clines half as large as the 1987 crash and almost equal to the 2008 sales of Societe Generale suggest that useful early warning systems are feasible. Larger-than-predicted temporary price declines during two flash crashes suggest rapid selling exacerbates transitory price impact. Smaller-than-predicted price declines for the 1929 crash sug- gest slower selling stabilized prices and less integration made markets more resilient. Quantities sold in the three largest crashes suggest fatter tails or larger variance than the log-normal distribution esti- mated from portfolio transitions data. JEL: G01, G28, N22

Odnos kretanja bilansnih stavki i likvidnosti - primer bankarskog sektora Srbije

The subject of research in this paper are eight balance sheets (based on regular annual financial statements), with the aim of finding out the effect of fluctuations in balance sheet items on the movement of commonly used liquidity ratios on a sample of 10 leading Serbian banks in terms of balance sheet assets (Banca Intesa, Komercijalna, UniCredit, Societe Generale, Raiffeisen, AIK, Eurobanka, Erste Bank, Postanska stednionica i Vojvodjanska), by applying Pearson's correlation coefficient for the period 2010-2017. The four most commonly used liquidity ratios were used as dependent variables, while individual balance sheet items (part of the liquidity formula) were used as independent variables. According to the conducted research, Serbian banking sector recorded positive performance i.e. was sufficiently liquid, from 2010 to 2017. Furthermore, very strong correlation was observed between an increase in cash and an increase in bank liquidity, while there was a moderate correlation between an increase in cash and average total liabilities. Moreover, the increase in loans and receivables from banks and other financial institutions had a significant impact on the increase of liquidity, as well as on the increase in provisions and equity. Finally, the increase in the value of owned property and deposits had a negative impact on liquidity ratios.

Report: Analysis of Stock Prices of French Stock Market Index (Presentation Slides)

This econometric application focuses on the dynamic analysis of stock prices of BNP Paribas (BNP), Carrefour(CAR), Engie (ENG) and Societe Generale (SoG) which are all companies listed on the French Stock Market by comparing them with the CAC40 index and further analysing these firms in relation to the CAPM under an Ordinary Least Squares(OLS) regression model. The raw data series are obtained from the Yahoo! Finance website and are collected in the Gretl6 data file capm.gdt. The data are of weekly frequency and cover the period January 2000 - December 2016, for a total of 887 observations.

Go Active or Stay Passive: Investment Trusts, Financial Innovation and Diversification in Belgium’s Early Days

In 1836, Societe Generale created the world’s first closed-end equity fund, Mutualite Industrielle. It promised to be a diversification tool targeted towards less-wealthy investors. We confirm that the trust’s returns were indeed better than returns on synthetic portfolios such investors had access to. However, it never became a commercial success. This paper presents a possible rational explanation why this innovation was liquidated in 1873. First, we show that the trust offered a performance similar to randomly-selected portfolios. Second, portfolio strategies to which mostly wealthy and sophisticated investors had access were able to outperform the trust. Mutualite Industrielle’s failure to offer a sufficiently attractive alternative to investors is consistent with its difficulty to attract sufficient funds to keep the trust in business.

Technical analysis in estimating currency risk portfolios: case study: commercial banks in Romania

Value at Risk method became one of the most used tools in bank management in order to estimate the losses resulting from a foreign currency portfolio. The study aims to estimate the maximum loss for the euro currency due to exchange rate volatility by establishing VaR, starting from the method based on historical simulations. The sample of the research consists of the four commercial banks listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), respectively: Romanian Commercial Bank SA (member of Erste – BCR Group); Romanian Development Bank – Groupe Societe Generale (BRD); Transylvania Bank SA (BT) and Carpatica Bank (BCC), based on a number of 757 observations corresponding to the working days in the period 1 January 2012 – 31 December 2014. The results obtained from the research showed that in case of the analyzed banks the maximum anticipated loss in a future time horizon of 10 days, with a relevance of 1%, does not exceed 2% of the net positions on the euro currency. The study could not be extended to other currencies, because in the information available for the four commercial banks only the net position on the euro currency is separately expressed.

Financial Cash-Flow Scripting: Beyond Valuation (Presentation Slides)

Financial Cash-Flow Scripting: Beyond Valuation (Presentation Slides)

Strategies of visibility in contemporary surveillance settings: Insights from misconduct concealment in financial markets

Abstract This paper complements critical accounting research on surveillance by reversing the dominant perspective focusing on surveilling actors, considering those surveilled. Building on Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis to examine how surveilled individuals present themselves (i.e., their strategies of visibility) to the surveilling audiences and drawing on the 2008 Societe Generale (SocGen) trading scandal, we examine the strategies elaborated by the involved trader to initially conceal his misconduct and achieve a positive image vis-a-vis the multiple surveilling audiences. Our analysis shows how strategies of visibility are developed in such contexts by separating a front that complies with audiences’ expectations from a backstage where elements that are inconsistent with those expectations are concealed. The development of such strategies of visibility also requires the segregation of audiences to avoid inconsistencies between fronts. This study further points to the issue of coordination among multiple intersecting control systems. Finally, it reveals the importance of technical literacy in settings with sophisticated control systems, for both the surveilling party, to exert control, and the surveilled one, to manage their visibility. This paper incidentally outlines that while control is increasingly sophisticated and multiple, there is still space for agency. As shadow spaces remain, we are not yet in a control society itself a la Deleuze (1995).

Vliv příslušnosti k finanční skupině na likviditu a solventnost bank ve Visegrádských zemích

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the liquidity and solvency of commercial banks in the Visegrad countries during the 2000-2016 period and to determine whether banks that belong to a financial conglomerate are more or less liquid and solvent than other banks in the sector. We used four liquidity ratios and one solvency ratio and compared the value of these ratios of banks with the median values in each banking sector. We will focus on banks from five financial conglomerates: Erste Group, KBC Group, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, Societe Generale Group and UniCredit Group. All banks that belong to a financial conglomerate in Hungary are more solvent and mostly more liquid than other banks in the Hungarian banking sector. Banks from all analyzed groups held a higher buffer of liquid assets and mostly focus less on providing loans to non-bank customers. As the other results are mixed (for individual financial groups, individual countries, individual financial ratios), we cannot confirm that banks in a financial conglomerate are more or less liquid and solvent than other banks in the banking sector.

Longevity Risk and Capital Markets: The 2015-16 Update

This Special Issue of Insurance: Mathematics and Economics contains 16 contributions to the academic literature all dealing with longevity risk and capital markets. Draft versions of the papers were presented at Longevity 11: The Eleventh International Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions Conference that was held in Lyon, France on 8-9 September 2015. It was hosted by Institut de Science Financiere et d'Assurance (ISFA), Universite Lyon 1, Lyon, and co-hosted by Laboratoire de Science Financiere et d'Assurances, Lyon; Laboratoire de Probabilites et Modeles Aleatoires, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris; Pensions Institute, Cass Business School, City University of London, UK; and the LoLitA (Longevity with Lifestyle Adjustments) ANR research project team. It was sponsored by Prudential Financial, SCOR, Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking, the Society of Actuaries (SOA), EY, Milliman, Reinsurance Group of America, Aon Benfield, Guy Carpenter, PRIM’ACT, and SINALYS.