SocGen: Peace not war

Better safe than sorry. It has taken BNP Paribas two months to decide that a merger with its fraud-plagued rival Société Générale wouldn’t create value after all. When SocGen was weakened by news it had lost E5bn on unauthorised trades, its larger competitor first said it was “studying” a possible bid. A few weeks later, Baudouin Prot, BNP’s chief executive, said that the situation was “complex”. BNP now says that the conditions for creating value through a SocGen merger “aren’t met”. A lot of ...