The sudden shrivelling of the SocGen fixed income business
It's SocGen results day and if you work in equities sales and trading sun is shining there with fervent zest. If you work in fixed income sales and trading, it is not.
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SocGen's figures show that its fixed income sales and trading revenues have shrivelled to just 28.3% of the combined revenues in equities and fixed income trading businesses after falling 21% year-on-year in the third quarter. Equities sales and trading revenues at SocGen rose 46% over the same period, driven partly by the consolidation of Bernstein's business in the US.
Many banks did not have a strong third quarter in fixed income trading but SocGen had the worst of the lot. Worse, even, than Bank of America (-17%). Worse than Barclays (-19%). Worse than Deutsche Bank (-11% when FIC financing is excluded).
What went wrong? It's not entirely clear, but SocGen said today that activity has been lower in rates trading. European rates trading was presumably to blame given that this is where SocGen's hard-driving CEO Slawomir Krupa said the business was focused earlier this year. Unexpected gyrations in French government bonds may not have helped.
The decline meant that fixed income sales and trading revenues fell to the lowest they've been as a proportion of the total since at least 2022. Nine months ago, Krupa noted that the ratio was typically split 60:40 between equities and fixed income.
Fixed income's shrivelled status at the French bank follows the departure of Francisco "Chico" Oliveira in July. Oliveira was hired in 2025 with a mandate to pursue SocGen's "ambition" to grow the fixed income business, and flow trading in particular.
That appears to have been quietly set aside. During SocGen's strategy presentation in September, Krupa said the bank will now be growing its fixed income offering "beyond the flow business, and we will build on our strong origination capabilities to expand credit distributionâ instead.
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