PEOPLE - Socgen's New Star

Frédéric Oudea has won a swift reward for successfully overseeing Société Générale’s €5.5 billion ($8.6 billion) rights issue last month. The 44-year-old chief financial officer has been promoted to deputy chief executive. Oudea, who continues as CFO, has never run any of the bank’s major divisions, but he appears to have leapfrogged Jean-Pierre Mustier, the head of SocGen’s investment banking arm, as dauphin to group chairman and CEO Daniel Bouton. Bouton has faced calls to resign, including one from President Nicolas Sarkozy, over the bank’s €4.9-billion loss on unauthorized equity index trading, announced in January. The incident also damaged the reputation of Mustier, 46, whose unit employed alleged rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel. The bank rejected both executives’ resignation offers in January. The rights issue that raised Oudea’s profile could end up helping Bouton and Mustier, though. Says Pierre Flabbée, an analyst at Landisbanki Kepler in Paris, “If they can use the proceeds from the rights issue to keep the current investment banking model growing strongly, there is no reason why Bouton can’t remain chairman, nor why Mustier can’t be back in the race to succeed him."