Contingent obligations: Societe Generale and the French state, 1945--1981

The history of Société Générale from 1945 to 1981 reveals that the French bank nationalizations of 1945 had little impact on financial institutions taken over by the state. Nationalization did not reform the corporate governance of these institutions, nor did it instill any greater transparency in the French banking system. Any effort to democratize French finance through bank nationalization was negated by the persistence of a regulatory structure dating back to 1941. Société Générale and its fellow nationalisées maintained a spirit of independence that prevented the state from forcing the banks to finance the objectives of the post-war state. France's post-war “developmental” state enlarged the role of pre-existing public or para-public financial institutions to finance reconstruction and later to invest in the modernization of the French economy, while traditional banks primarily offered short-term credit.; Although independent, the nationalized banks were granted little latitude for action since the state controlled and rationed any credit outside the public financial circuit. Consequently, the structure of the French banking system as a whole would have far greater impact on Société Générale than the structure of the bank's ownership. Société Générale's autonomy challenges our previous understanding of consensus and dissension within the French financial elite, and reveals the continuing influence of individual institutional cultures of nationalized enterprises.