Slawomir Krupa

"You cannot be successful without doing something that gives you intellectual satisfaction... Don't choose banking for the wrong reasons. Choose banking for the intellectual kilos of the job every day and the quality of the relationships you are able to build... Make sure you always stay true to yourself and your values. There is no true success without staying true to yourself."

— Slawomir Krupa

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Overview

Slawomir Krupa
Born	1974 (age 51–52) Burgas, Bulgaria
Citizenship	French and Polish
Education	Degree in international relations
Alma mater	Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)
Occupation(s)	Banker, business executive
Employer	Société Générale
Known for	Chief executive officer of Société Générale since 2023
Title	Chief Executive Officer
Term	23 May 2023 – present
Predecessor	Frédéric Oudéa
Board member of	French Banking Federation (chairman); European Banking Federation (president); Albertine Foundation (vice-chairman)
Spouse	Polish-born concert pianist
Children	1 daughter
Website	https://www.societegenerale.com/en/sg_gouvernance_member/slawomir-krupa

🏦 Slawomir Krupa (born 1974) is a Franco-Polish banker and business executive who has served since May 2023 as chief executive officer of Société Générale, France’s third-largest listed bank by assets. Rising through the bank’s internal inspection and corporate and investment banking ranks, he built a reputation as a demanding “fixer” who restructures underperforming businesses and tightens risk controls, notably during his tenure as chief executive of SG Americas in New York and later as head of the Global Banking and Investor Solutions division. As chief executive, Krupa has pursued a conservative “back to basics” strategy focused on capital strength, cost cutting and a simplified business portfolio, a stance that initially disappointed investors but later produced improving earnings and industry influence, including his appointments as chairman of the French Banking Federation and president of the European Banking Federation.

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Early life and education

🧒 Childhood and family background. Krupa was born in 1974 in Burgas, on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, to Polish academic parents who were then working abroad before returning to communist-era Kraków, where he spent his early childhood. When he was six the family emigrated to France, settling in Lille; his mother became a linguistics professor and his father a language teacher, providing an intellectual and multilingual household that would later underpin his ease in several cultures and languages. The experience of moving from Eastern Europe to northern France, with parents who had lived under different political systems, later informed his emphasis on adaptability and his aversion to rigid ideological views.

🎓 Sciences Po and intellectual formation. After secondary school in France, Krupa was admitted to the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), where he studied in the international relations section and graduated in 1996. His academic focus was initially oriented towards politics, history and international affairs rather than finance, but a formative course in financial markets convinced him that banking could combine analytical rigor with global exposure. Krupa has said that Sciences Po’s multi-disciplinary teaching encouraged him to analyse problems from several angles rather than in “black and white”, a habit he later applied to risk assessment and strategic decisions inside Société Générale.

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Career

💼 Entry into Société Générale and inspection work. Upon graduating from Sciences Po in 1996, Krupa joined Société Générale’s prestigious General Inspection department as a junior inspector, embarking on a demanding internal-audit track that rotates high-potential staff through assignments across the group’s businesses and geographies. The role gave him broad exposure to the mechanics of retail and investment banking, from balance sheet management to operational risk, and by 2005 he had joined the management team of the Inspection Générale, supervising missions that scrutinised the bank’s global operations. Colleagues later noted that these formative years shaped his reputation as a disciplined operator who is comfortable challenging entrenched practices when the control framework appears weak.

🚀 Entrepreneurial detour and return to the bank. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom and aged 25, Krupa left the relative security of Société Générale to launch an e-finance start-up in Eastern Europe, headquartered in his native Poland. The venture struggled as the technology bubble burst, and he has described the experience as both a “dose of humble pie” and a practical education in risk-taking, failure and resilience. In 2002 he returned to Société Générale, bringing what he characterised as a sharper business sense and a willingness to innovate rather than simply climb the hierarchy, and he later summarised the lesson with the remark that “there is no true success without staying true to yourself”.

📊 Shift to front-office and regional leadership roles. After resuming his inspection responsibilities, Krupa moved in 2007 from audit into front-office roles within the corporate and investment bank, initially as director of strategy and development. He subsequently headed Société Générale’s operations in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while also serving as deputy head of the global financing division, overseeing activities such as debt capital markets and leveraged finance alongside his regional portfolio. These overlapping responsibilities gave him detailed knowledge of the bank’s financing franchises from Paris to Casablanca and Moscow, and helped establish his image as a problem-solver who could untangle complex operational and regulatory issues in very different environments.

🗽 Chief executive of SG Americas. A major turning point came in January 2016, when Krupa was appointed chief executive officer of SG Americas, the group’s New York-based subsidiary, at a time when Société Générale’s U.S. platform faced stricter post-crisis regulations, middling profitability and the lingering fallout from sanctions and benchmark-rigging cases that had led to multi-billion-dollar settlements with American authorities. In the United States he cut risk exposure in volatile trading businesses, tightened cost discipline and pushed for stronger internal controls, while working to rebuild credibility with regulators such as the Federal Reserve after earlier compliance lapses. Under his leadership the American arm’s profitability and stability improved relative to some European peers, bolstering his standing within the wider group as an executive capable of leading a sensitive turnaround in a demanding supervisory environment.

🏛️ Head of Global Banking and Investor Solutions. In 2021, amid a wider reshuffle of Société Générale’s senior management, Krupa returned to Paris to join the group’s executive committee as head of the Global Banking and Investor Solutions division, which encompasses corporate and investment banking and had recently suffered losses in structured products during the market turmoil of 2020. He responded by reducing risk-weighted assets, exiting less profitable niches and articulating a plan for “profitable and sustainable growth” centred on capital efficiency and client-focused franchises. Over the following 18 months the division became the group’s main engine of earnings, recording the strongest annual pre-tax profit growth among major French banks and benefiting from double-digit growth in equities trading revenues, developments that helped restore market and internal confidence in the investment bank.

👔 Succession race and appointment as chief executive officer. In September 2022, long-serving chief executive Frédéric Oudéa announced his intention to step down after 15 years, triggering speculation over who would lead Société Générale through its next phase. Many observers initially saw Sébastien Proto, a younger deputy with a background in the French civil service, as the likely successor, but in a break with tradition the board chose Krupa, a career banker without experience in the grands corps, as the next chief executive. He took office on 23 May 2023 at the age of 48, becoming the first Société Générale chief executive in recent decades not drawn from the ranks of the elite ENA and Finance Ministry network; chairman Lorenzo Bini Smaghi praised his “vision and leadership” and understanding of markets, while his selection was also linked to his track record in investment banking and his strategic ideas for the group’s future. At the time of his promotion, Krupa held dual French and Polish citizenship and his family was still based in New York, underlining his international profile.

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Strategy and performance as CEO of Société Générale

📉 Mandate and initial market scepticism. When Krupa formally assumed the chief executive role in 2023, Société Générale’s shares were trading at only around 30% of tangible book value, a discount comparable to that of the then-troubled Deutsche Bank and well below domestic rival BNP Paribas, reflecting deep investor scepticism about the group’s profitability and strategic clarity. His mandate from the board was to improve returns and articulate a clearer identity for France’s third-largest listed lender, and he signalled early on that he would not pursue large “transformational” mergers in the short term, preferring to focus on balance-sheet strength and operational simplification rather than headline-grabbing deals.

📑 A cautious medium-term plan. In September 2023 Krupa unveiled his first strategic plan, presenting what he called a “realistic” roadmap through 2026 that prioritised resilience over rapid expansion. The bank guided investors to expect flat to modestly positive annual revenue growth of 0–2% and set a target return on tangible equity of 9–10% by 2026, coupled with a slightly reduced payout ratio of 40–50% of earnings and a core tier-one capital ratio comfortably above 13%. The plan acknowledged structural pressures on the French retail bank, notably long-dated fixed-rate mortgage books and regulatory constraints, and the recent volatility of markets-facing activities, and it framed the strategy as one of “promise less, deliver more” after what Krupa saw as earlier episodes of over-ambitious targets.

📉 Negative market reaction and defence of the plan. The market’s immediate reaction to the September 2023 announcement was sharply negative: Société Générale’s shares fell by more than 9% on the day, erasing roughly €2 billion in market capitalisation and marking the stock’s worst single session in six months, while analysts at Jefferies and other brokers criticised the “underwhelming” growth outlook and lower profitability guidance. Krupa publicly defended the plan, arguing that “there would be no sense whatsoever” in setting objectives whose credibility investors would immediately question and insisting that the right approach for the bank was one designed “for decades to come” rather than to satisfy short-term expectations. He framed the subdued revenue ambitions as a deliberate choice to focus on cost control, capital strength and risk management, even at the expense of near-term market approval.

✂️ Cost-cutting and restructuring measures. Central to the new strategy was an ambitious cost-cutting programme targeting €1.7 billion of savings by 2026, equivalent to around 8% of the group’s cost base, to bring the cost-to-income ratio below 60%. The measures included completing the integration of Crédit du Nord into Société Générale’s main French retail network, accelerating digitalisation in international subsidiaries, simplifying the organisational structure and overhauling information systems. In January 2024 the bank announced plans to cut around 900 positions in headquarters and central functions in France, mainly through voluntary departures and redeployments, and to reduce external consultancy costs and management layers, steps that drew criticism from unions but were presented by Krupa as necessary to restore competitiveness.

💹 Earnings rebound and management shake-up. By late 2024 there were early signs that the cost and simplification drive was contributing to stronger results: in the third quarter of 2024 Société Générale reported net income of about €1.37 billion, roughly four times the level a year earlier, supported by a rebound in French retail banking margins and a 10% rise in equities trading revenues. Seizing the momentum, Krupa announced a shake-up of his top team in October 2024, removing chief financial officer Claire Dumas and appointing Leopoldo Alvear, previously of Spanish bank Sabadell, as the new CFO, while personally taking direct oversight of the domestic retail division and changing its leadership. The combination of strong quarterly earnings and decisive governance changes prompted the bank’s shares to rise by more than 10% in a single session, their largest daily gain in years, turning the stock positive for 2024 and prompting some analysts to suggest that the worst of the strategic reset was behind the group.

📈 Relative performance and strategic adjustments. Despite the rally, Société Générale’s overall share performance under Krupa remained mixed: by the end of 2024 the stock had risen by around 11% since he took office, compared with a roughly 37% increase in a European banking index over the same period, leaving the bank still trading at a discount to peers and subject to what analysts described as a persistent “show-me” valuation. In response to early progress on cost targets, Krupa modestly raised the bank’s profitability ambition to about 9% return on equity for 2023, up from an earlier 8% goal, and accelerated efforts to refocus on a smaller set of core businesses, including the rapid expansion of the online bank Boursorama and the integration of LeasePlan into the listed car-leasing subsidiary ALD to exploit growth in auto leasing. In investment banking he has promoted an “originate-to-distribute” model less reliant on using the bank’s balance sheet and backed a joint venture with AllianceBernstein in cash equities and research in order to bolster the U.S. franchise without heavy capital consumption.

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Financial compensation and external roles

💶 Remuneration as chief executive. As chief executive of Société Générale, Krupa receives a remuneration package that is significant by French standards but modest compared with those of leading U.S. bank chiefs. When he took the top job in 2023 the board set his fixed annual salary at €1.65 million, around €350,000 higher than that of his predecessor, and made him eligible for a variable bonus target of 120% of fixed pay and long-term incentive awards conditional on performance metrics such as profitability, cost control and capital ratios. In 2024, his first full year in the role, his total pay amounted to about €5 million, including roughly €2.23 million in variable compensation, making him the highest-paid banking chief executive in France that year but still far below some European and U.S. peers. Commentators noted that his remuneration remained a small fraction of that of figures such as JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, underscoring the structural pay gap between Wall Street and continental European banks.

📊 Wealth, shareholding and governance requirements. Krupa’s personal net worth is not publicly disclosed in detail, and there is no indication that he holds an unusually large equity stake in Société Générale; as a long-serving professional manager rather than a founder, his wealth largely derives from salary, bonuses and deferred stock awards. The bank’s governance rules require the chief executive to hold a minimum number of Société Générale shares, but public filings suggest that Krupa’s holding is well below 0.1% of the company’s capital, aligning his interests with those of shareholders without conferring controlling influence.

🏛️ Roles in French and European banking associations. Beyond his responsibilities at Société Générale, Krupa has emerged as a prominent industry representative. In 2024 he became chairman of the French Banking Federation (FBF), the professional body representing banks operating in France, for a one-year term starting on 1 September. In this capacity he has engaged with policymakers and regulators on issues ranging from macroprudential rules to consumer protection, positioning himself as a spokesperson for the sector’s concerns. The following year he was elected president of the European Banking Federation (EBF), succeeding the chief executive of Deutsche Bank and giving him a continental platform to advocate for deeper European capital markets and a regulatory framework that balances financial stability with the competitiveness of EU banks against U.S. and Asian rivals.

🎭 Cultural and philanthropic engagements. Krupa also holds positions outside pure banking: he serves as vice-chairman of the Albertine Foundation in New York, a cultural organisation promoting French-American exchange in education and the arts, reflecting ties built during his years in the United States. He has supported charitable causes including Imagine for Margo, a French organisation dedicated to children’s cancer research, for which he has raised funds through sponsorship drives and charity runs, asking contacts to contribute to medical research in lieu of traditional farewell gifts when he left New York. These activities complement his professional advocacy on financial-sector issues and contribute to his public image as a banker attentive to wider social and cultural questions.

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Personal life and leadership style

🌍 Cosmopolitan identity and family. Krupa holds both French and Polish citizenship, speaks French and Polish fluently and is also at ease in English, and he often refers to himself as having multiple cultural identities shaped by his childhood in Eastern Europe and adulthood in France and the United States. He met his future wife, a Polish-born concert pianist, during a posting back in Poland in the early 2000s, and the couple have one daughter; for much of the 2010s the family lived in New York during his tenure at SG Americas and continued to maintain links with the United States even after his return to Paris. Friends and colleagues have suggested that this transatlantic life contributes to his ease in navigating different social and business milieus, from French regulatory circles to U.S. markets and Central European contexts.

🧭 Management approach and reputation inside the bank. Inside Société Générale, Krupa is often characterised as direct, action-oriented and impatient with bureaucracy, traits that some observers describe as closer to an “Anglo-Saxon” management style than the more consensual approach associated with parts of the French establishment. Former Société Générale investment banking head Jean-Pierre Mustier, later chief executive of UniCredit, has commented that Krupa has “a way of moving forward, of taking people with him,” while subordinates have remarked that his bluntness means “you always know where you stand”. He is known to drill into details, push teams hard and rapidly change leadership when performance lags, as demonstrated by his decisions to reshuffle the French retail arm and replace the group’s chief financial officer, moves that sent a signal that mediocrity would not be tolerated.

🏃 Interests and life outside the office. Away from the executive floor, Krupa is described by acquaintances as affable, witty and intellectually curious, maintaining a long-standing interest in history and international affairs that dates back to his university studies. During his years near the water in New York he developed a passion for sailing, particularly catamaran regattas, and he has drawn parallels between skippering a fast multihull with a crew and managing a trading floor, emphasising the need for rapid, coordinated responses to changing conditions. He also enjoys distance running and has been seen jogging along the Seine and participating in charity races linked to causes such as Imagine for Margo, integrating physical challenges with fundraising efforts. Despite leading one of Europe’s major banks, he keeps a comparatively low public profile, preferring time with his family to the Paris social circuit and often eschewing some of the formalities that traditionally surround French corporate leaders.

🧱 Leadership philosophy and views on career choice. In public appearances, including talks to students at his alma mater, Krupa has stressed the importance of authenticity and intellectual engagement in professional life, warning young people not to “choose banking for the wrong reasons” and arguing that a sustainable career requires genuine interest in the subject matter. He has spoken of his role as chief executive as that of “enabling others’ greatness” by creating conditions in which teams can debate openly and take responsibility, rather than relying on hierarchy for its own sake, and he encourages dissenting views in meetings as long as the final decisions are then executed collectively. Some commentators have suggested that his forthright style could be a double-edged sword in an industry where diplomacy can smooth conflicts, but thus far he has managed to build a coalition of supportive executives by mixing new appointments with continuity in key positions.

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Controversies, criticism and challenges

📉 Investor scepticism and debate over strategic ambition. Krupa’s tenure has been marked from the outset by a tension between his cautious plan and investors’ hunger for bolder moves. The sharp share-price fall that followed his 2023 strategy presentation was widely interpreted as an expression of disappointment with what some analysts saw as overly modest targets and a reluctance to pursue transformative mergers or disposals. Critics, including academics quoted in the financial press, have questioned whether a mid-sized institution such as Société Générale can sustainably raise its profitability without exploring consolidation, while supporters argue that the group’s existing franchises in European retail and corporate banking, energy-transition financing and specialised financial services can generate acceptable returns if managed with discipline. Krupa has repeatedly played down the prospect of a near-term merger with another European bank, emphasising instead partnership models such as the AllianceBernstein joint venture in equities, and insisting that steady execution will over time convince the market.

🌍 Legacy risks, Russia exit and workforce anxiety. Although Krupa was not chief executive during Société Générale’s costly withdrawal from Russia in 2022, which involved the sale of subsidiary Rosbank at a significant loss following the invasion of Ukraine, he has had to manage the redeployment of capital freed by that exit and ensure that risk and compliance frameworks are robust enough to mitigate similar geopolitical exposures in future. The restructuring associated with his cost-cutting programme, including plans for several hundred job reductions in central functions, has generated unease among employees and pushback from French trade unions, which have questioned the social impact of cuts announced in parallel with a return to profit. Management has stressed that most reductions will occur through natural attrition, voluntary departures or redeployments and that the branch network would be largely preserved, but the changes represent a cultural shift in a group traditionally known for a more gradualist internal pace.

♻️ ESG and climate-policy criticism. The area where Krupa has faced the most visible public criticism has been environmental policy, particularly the bank’s stance on fossil-fuel financing. At the May 2023 annual general meeting, which coincided with his formal start as chief executive, activists from non-governmental organisations including Reclaim Finance and ShareAction challenged Société Générale’s continued participation in financing oil and gas expansion and pressed for stricter exclusions similar to those adopted by some rival banks. Krupa acknowledged the climate challenge but described the energy transition as “a complicated subject” and argued against abrupt disengagement, instead emphasising a gradual reduction in exposure and support for clients’ transition plans, an approach that activists criticised as insufficient and overly incremental. Under continued pressure, Société Générale has since tightened its fossil-fuel policies, including commitments not to finance new oil and gas field development, and has expanded its sustainable finance ambitions to more than €300 billion by the mid-2020s, although campaigners continue to monitor the implementation of these pledges.

🏛️ Regulatory stance and political positioning. As head of both the French and European banking federations, Krupa has been closely involved in debates over banking regulation, advocating what he describes as a balanced approach that maintains strong capital and liquidity standards while avoiding rule-making that could unduly disadvantage European banks relative to global competitors. He has engaged with national and European authorities on topics such as the implementation of Basel III reforms, proposals for windfall taxes on banks and the creation of a deeper capital markets union, generally favouring pragmatic compromises over polarising public interventions. In domestic social debates he has taken a relatively low-profile stance, continuing programmes on diversity and gender balance inherited from previous management but rarely speaking in partisan terms, a discretion that some observers link to his background in a family that experienced contrasting political regimes and that taught him to distrust ideological extremes.

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Legacy and assessment

🔭 Long-term questions over Société Générale’s trajectory. Commentators have noted that Krupa’s project for Société Générale hinges on proving that a large but not dominant European bank can restore its reputation and profitability through discipline, simplification and incremental reallocation of capital rather than through dramatic mergers or aggressive risk-taking. Supporters argue that his internal track record—from restructuring SG Americas to revitalising the Global Banking and Investor Solutions division—demonstrates his ability to execute difficult turnarounds, while critics worry that the bank’s structural challenges and competitive pressures may ultimately require bolder moves than those currently envisaged. In a widely read profile, the French magazine Le Point framed the central question of his mandate as whether this “newcomer” to France’s traditional financial establishment will succeed in “restoring Société Générale’s shine”, a formulation that encapsulates both the expectations and the doubts surrounding his leadership. Krupa, for his part, has continued to express confidence that his conservative plan is “the right one for decades to come”, suggesting that he is playing a long game in which consistent delivery, rather than rapid headline change, will be the ultimate test of his tenure.

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