The banking group sold its Asian private bank last year but remains well placed through its agreement with DBS, and through its network, to exploit rapid growth in Asian wealth, a senior executive said.

Societe Generale is well placed to continue tapping into Asian entrepreneurs’ wealth and business needs through partnerships it has in the fast-growing region, the French bank said when asked about the consequences of selling its Asian private bank last year.

The Paris-listed lender’s private bank, in conjunction with Forbes, has launched a report exploring the views of more than 200 entrepreneurs around the world. The report, called Creating Wealth, A Survey of Entrepreneurs Worldwide: Their Insights. Their Challenges. Their Needs, found that 73 per cent of Asian respondents are upbeat about economic prospects in their country, with 51 per cent saying China is the place where the most money will be made. The report shows contrasts between how entrepreneurs view their regions and how they are seen by those from other parts of the world.

Given the continued buoyancy of Asia and the confidence of business people in that region, how does the bank feel about last March’s agreement to sell its Asian private banking arm, if this is a region where there is likely to be continued rapid growth in high net worth individuals?

That was the question this publication put to Jean-François Mazaud, head of Societe Generale Private Banking, at a presentation of the report at the firm’s London offices yesterday.

When the group sold the private bank in Asia to DBS Group, a part of the agreement was that Societe Generale’s clients will have access to DBS’s private banking offering in Asia, while DBS clients get access to Societe Generale’s offerings in Europe as well as its corporate and investment banking solutions, Mazaud said.

“It is not that we don’t operate in Hong Kong and Singapore or that we don’t have Asian clients,” he continued. “We decided to sell but we also agreed to share platforms [with DBS],” he said. “We operate on a B2B [business-to-business] basis and that for us is a more efficient way of making the business,” he said.

An issue was that Societe Generale’s private bank in Asia, with the assets under management it was overseeing, did not have the critical mass to be a fully successful business – if those assets had doubled then this would have been different, he added.

At the time of the agreement, DBS Group bought a business with $12.6 billion of assets (as at the end of 2013), buying the firm for $220 million in cash, with an adjustment based on the net asset value and the assets under management at the completion of the deal. The firms also entered into a memorandum of understanding to develop a commercial partnership to benefit their respective sets of clients.

Regional differences
Among other points, the report found that when entrepreneurs were asked about their views on the state of the economy in their countries, 53 per cent of respondents said it was “very good”, 29 per cent said “neutral” and 18 per cent said “poor”.

In Asia-Pacific, some 73 per cent said “very good”, 18 per cent said “neutral” and only 9 per cent said “poor”. In Europe, by contrast, only 30 per cent said prospects were “good”, 34 per cent said “neutral” and 36 per cent said “poor”.

In North America, 63 per cent of respondents said the state of the economy was “very good”, 28 per cent said “neutral” and 9 per cent said “poor”. In the Middle East and North Africa, 57 per cent said the state of the economy in their countries was “very good”, 36 per cent said “neutral” and 7 per cent said “poor”.

There are big differences between how business people saw their own countries and how they were perceived from outside, suggesting the media and other forces can colour perceptions to a degree, the survey showed. For example, 35 per cent of North American respondents said the state of the world economy was “very good” and 63 per cent of respondents from this region said the state of their region’s economy was “very good”.

Separately, when asked if their countries enjoyed a competitive advantage, 66 per cent of Asian respondents said yes, 76 per cent of North Americans said yes, but only 18 per cent of those from the Middle East and Africa said yes. Some 35 per cent of European respondents said their countries had a competitive advantage.