FEATURE | Q&A
SG public distribution biz ‘reaps rewards’ of CBK integration The French bank’s strategy has paid off as the CBK’s business has fitted perfectly with SG’s set up and needs.
addressed by running initially the two ex-CBK and SG issuance and trading systems in parallel until the IT landscape was later simplified.” The migration and integration of the public distribution business “proved extremely successful in several areas”. The first element is client retention as the acquisition gave SG the opportunity to increase its market share substantially in Germany - the largest market in Europe for public distribution, and to enter countries which were strategic to the French bank such as The Netherlands, The Nordics and Switzerland. “We showed we could transfer and retain almost all of the retail clients of CBK and add new self-directed investors in other markets where we were not active such as Portugal,” says Imbert.
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ince Société Générale (SG) completed the acquisition of the Commerzbank’s (CBK) Equity Markets and Commodities’ (EMC) business with the integration of the German bank’s exchange-traded investment solutions in Q2 2020, the French bank has racked up the highest market share by exchange turnover in Germany – according to the German DDV, and was the number two provider of listed products (by issuance) in 2021 across Europe. The full integration of the CBK EMC business, however, wasn’t a five-finger exercise as two trading systems (CBK-Icon/SGDomino) that ran in parallel for some time had to be integrated and there were “several key pillars within the acquisition” including the b2b structured investment products business, the ETF part with the CBK Comstage brand, and then the listed products business, i.e. the warrants and certificates business. “This third pillar, which was the last part to be integrated, required the most preparation and resources as it involved a significant and sophisticated IT system that needed to run smoothly throughout the integration,” says Didier Imbert (pictured), head of public distribution Europe, SG. “This was
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“[We were also able] to transfer fully all the specific partnerships that CBK had with numerous European brokers and online banks with bespoke connectivity requirements to continue with the activity in a smooth manner.” The integration also had a strong technology focus as SG decided to inherit and integrate CBK’s full IT infrastructure dedicated to listed products. “We had to make sure that both systems could talk to each other, and that all the issuance tools, and trading systems used to animate the price of all products real time on several markets in Europe worked - it required significant time to prepare the onboarding of the CBK systems which had around 20 applications into our own IT infrastructure,” says Imbert - the two systems are now fully integrated and have been simplified over 2021 since the migration occurred at end of March 2020. “Another critical element of the integration was the fact that we could count on a very professional and expert team as CBK had been running this business successfully for many years holding the number one position in Germany.” SG’s team in Germany is now led by Peter Boesenberg (pictured) who was appointed deputy head of public distribution Europe, in addition to his role of head of public distribution, Germany & Austria, earlier this month.
