PARIS (Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale's Chief Executive Officer Frederic Oudea said on Tuesday that he saw potential for more "incremental" acquisitions in Europe, mainly in corporate and investment banking.
"I believe corporate and investment banking within ten years will benefit the most from the banking union and the capital markets," he said during a breakfast with executives in Paris.
"There, we keep on investing, like we did with the Commerzbank (DE:CBKG) activities because in this European banking market, some will keep on exiting from some businesses and there will be a kind of consolidation."
Societe Generale (PA:SOGN) last week agreed to buy part of German bank Commerzbank's market activities.
Oudea said there was potential for incremental acquisitions on specific businesses as each bank in Europe was looking at all its activities to identify the businesses where they do not have the size to be competitive and sell those businesses.
Larger and more complex mergers between whole banks in Europe are not likely to happen soon as regulation conditions are still an obstacle, he said, but ultimately a consolidation around four or five large regional diversified banks in Europe was very likely down the road.