No fire sale

At first glance, it may look like Société Générale is offering a steep discount to make sure its E5.5bn capital increase won’t be another embarrassment. The E47.50 price for new shares to be sold to existing shareholders is a 39% discount to last Friday’s closing price and even a 33% discount to the three-year low it reached on January 28. But the terms don’t look like a distress signal. True, the banks that are fully underwriting the rights issue, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, have made sure t...