Societe Generale has appointed Karim Hajjaji as chief operating officer of its global investment management and services division, the arm of the French giant which includes its private banking, asset management and securities services businesses.

Hajjaji is already chief financial officer of the global investment management and services division and will retain these responsibilities in addition to his new ones. He will join the executive management team of the division, reporting to GIMS head, Jacques Ripoll.

Karim Hajjaji has been CFO of SocGen’s global investment management and services division since 2009, having previously been CFO of SG Americas from 2005, a role in which he supervised the firm’s activities in the US, Canada, Brazil and Latin America. He first joined SocGen in 1999 as head of financial control of the corporate and investment bank, having previously headed the financial control department at Dresdner France.

In its most recent results the private banking arm of SocGen reported that its total assets under management had risen slightly to €84.7 billion (around $112 billion) at the end of 2011, up from €84.5 billion at end-2010.

Client inflows of €2.3 billion in 2011 represented an annualised inflow rate of 2.7 per cent as well as the effects of currency movement.

The French firm’s private banking revenues rose by 6.1 per cent to €762 million in 2011 from the year before; the private bank had a margin rate of 95 basis points last year, excluding non-recurring items, compared with 98 bps in 2010.

SocGen’s private banking results contrasted favourably with that of its overall parent group, which saw net income drop sharply in 2011. At the private bank, however, net income rose 3.6 per cent to €115 million in 2011 from a year earlier.