SocGen to cut 700 jobs in Americas, Asia: sources

PARIS (Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale is to cut 700 jobs at its American and Asian operations as it pulls back on U.S. dollar lending to cut debt and strengthen its balance sheet, two trade-union sources said on Friday.

The move comes as the festering eurozone debt crisis reaches boiling point and as Europe's banks take fresh measures to restore investor confidence and meet tougher capital targets by mid-2012.

"They (SocGen) gave in New York a figure of 700 job cuts across the Americas and Asia," said Michel Marchet, a Paris-based CGT union representative.

France's second-biggest bank by market value has said it will sell assets to wean itself off frozen interbank lending markets and warned last month that "hundreds" of jobs would go.

A second Paris-based trade union source who did not wish to be named said: "We've been given the number, 700 people, in New York and in Asia."

A Societe Generale spokeswoman declined to comment. The bank was among the first to be hit hard this summer by the pullback of U.S. money markets from European bank funding, which spilled over into a share-price slide that spread across the sector.

France's biggest bank by market value, BNP Paribas , said last month it would cut over 1,700 jobs at its CIB and its asset-management divisions.

French bank layoffs are at the lower end of the job-cuts scale, especially compared with Unicredit's plan for 6,150 cuts.

The head of SocGen's corporate and investment banking division, which employs some 12,000 people, sent a message to employees on November 30 saying the bank had "reviewed" its activities in the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

"We are cutting our leverage, our dollar-financing needs and our operating costs," Michel Peretie wrote in the memo.

Meanwhile, Chief Executive Frederic Oudea, who rose to the top spot after the Jerome Kerviel rogue trading scandal almost brought the bank to its knees in 2008, has said SocGen will scrap its dividend and slash bonuses this year to preserve capital.

SocGen shares were up 8 percent at 18.91 euros on Friday, outperforming a 4.3 percent gain in the European sector <.SX7P>, but so far this year, the shares have 53 percent compared with a 34 percent drop in the sector.

The stock is valued at a price-to-book ratio of 0.29, compared with a sector average of 0.57.

(Reporting By Lionel Laurent and Matthieu Protard; Editing by Elena Berton and Christian Plumb)

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