New Director General heads Société Générale

The Cameroon subsidiary of the French Banking Group, Société Générale (SG), has a new Managing Director, the French Alexandre Bansal, replacing his compatriot, Jean Philippe Guillaume, whose reign has lasted a little more than three years.

Alexandre Bansal is 41 years old and was the Deputy Director-general at the headquarters of the banking group in Paris. Before that, he worked for BNP Paribas before joining Société Générale in 2000.

He inherited an institution which has for many years, been one of the three best banks in Cameroon and claims a net profit of 4.8 billion CFA francs in 2014.

A huge task awaits him due to the dynamism of the outgoing Director for the intensification network of the SG by creating nine new agencies in a little over three years and tripling the number of ATMs on the SG Cameroon network.

His term was also marked by the change of the logo. In 2013, la Société Générale de Banques au Cameroun (SGBC) became Société Générale Cameroun (SGC) to stick to the logo of the Paris mother house.

It was a transition that did not only have good memories bad bad ones as well. This is because the Cameroonian SG subsidiary was rocked with a strike action by employees who demanded a "redevelopment without delay form the Board of the Bank including Director General and the Director of human resources."

They could no longer take 'irreverent remarks" from the leaders towards the staff.