The banking group became the latest in a number of European lenders to announce second-quarter and half-year financial figures.

France’s Societe Generale has said today that its private banking business reported net banking income of €363 million ($415.46 million) for the second quarter of 2026, rising 18 per cent year-on-year. In the first six months of this year, the figure was €699 million.  

The business area reported €2.4 billion of net inflows in Q2 2026, with annualised inflows for the quarter accounting for 7 per cent of total assets under management. AuM rose 10 per cent year-on-year to a record €145 billion at the end of June, the bank said in a statement. 

Across all banking areas, SocGen said group revenues rose 2.4 per cent in the half-year period to €14.2 billion and costs fell 5 per cent in H1 2026, outperforming the bank’s 2026 cost reduction target of cutting outlays to around 3 per cent. 

So far this year, shares in the bank have risen about 9.5 per cent. 

“This momentum translates into a significant improvement in our profitability and allows us to upgrade our ROTE [return on tangible equity] target for 2026 to [about] 11 per cent,” Slawomir Krupa, the group’s chief executive, said.

Paris-listed SocGen said it will distribute excess capital via an extraordinary share buy-back of €1.5 billion, to be launched on 3 August this year at the earliest. Its interim cash dividend is 0.751 cents per share for the half-year period, up 23 per cent on the same period a year ago, and it will be paid on 7 October.

At the end of June, SocGen had a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of 13.2 per cent, taking account of the extraordinary share buyback, as announced above. The ratio – a standard measure of a bank’s capital shock absorber – is above regulatory requirements.