Europe Investment-Grade Corporate Bond House: Societe Generale
Exceeding expectations
Three themes drove Europe’s corporate bond market in 2025: attractive pricing relative to US dollars, a spike in French issuance and tight senior-sub spreads for hybrid issuers. For leveraging those themes to make for a standout year, Societe Generale is IFR’s Europe Investment-Grade Corporate Bond House of the Year.
Societe Generale’s investment-grade corporate bond desk had a stellar year in the IFR Awards period. It ran 127 deals worth €20.7bn for a market share of 5.55%, the third largest in the market, according to LSEG data.
That was well up from its position in 2024 when the bank held seventh place from 109 deals worth €16bn for a market share of 4.31%.
Its growing market share was a particularly impressive feat for the French bank, given the spike in US supply, a trend that does not naturally bode well for its league table position.
“If you said at the start of the year that volumes and reverse Yankees would be up, I would have said we’d do well to finish fifth,” said Duane Elgey, head of European corporate syndicate at Societe Generale.
The bank has punched above its weight in bringing US clients to the euro market. It had a 6% market share for US issuers in euros, well up from 1.85% in 2024.
“We had a fantastic year with our US issuers,” said Andrew Menzies, global head of DCM.
US issuers came to the euro market in droves to make the most of the coupon differential and deepening pool of liquidity in Europe.
“What has changed is the ability for euros to deliver what US corporates can get in the US,” said Menzies. “The European market is deeper now and able to fulfil the requirements of US corporates.”
The bank has been active on some of the large headline trades, including IBM’s €3.5bn four-part trade in February, one of the first reverse Yankees of the year, Bristol Myers Squibb’s €5bn five-part deal in November and AT&T’s €2.75bn three-part trade in March.
It hasn’t just delivered for US clients in the public market; it also worked for those clients in the private markets.
Societe Generale led one of the largest private placements in the euro corporate market for AT&T in September, gathering investors for a €2.25bn two-year floating-rate note.
That made Societe Generale the only bank to be mandated on all AT&T’s euro funding in 2025.
It is those repeat mandates the bank is the most proud of. “We want to be defined as the European reference bank for our clients,” said Elgey.
The bank also benefited from a spike in issuance in its home market as French issuers sold bonds at pace to get ahead of any concerns about market volatility and an uncertain political backdrop.
The bank has played a lead role in several M&A-related trades from France, printing deals for Orange, Air Liquide, Capgemini and Schneider Electric.
The Orange trade stood out. The French telecoms company accelerated a €5bn five-part trade in November to make the most of the strong market backdrop to raise funds for its MasOrange acquisition while that was still at a non-binding agreement stage.
The lead banks pulled in peak orders of more than €20bn in a week that had already seen two €5bn five-part trades, from Alphabet and Bristol Myers Squibb.
The bank also proved the value it can bring to deals for more challenging credits, such as HLD Europe, Worldline, unrated Lagardere, Wendel and Icade.
The other major theme of the year that the bank capitalised on was the tight senior-sub spreads leading to a boom in corporate hybrids.
“Hybrids have been a very big achievement of the franchise this year – we’ve been on one deal out of every two,” said Julien Brune, head of DCM solutions and advisory.
Those deals included some of the more innovative supply for the year. Societe Generale was a dealer manager on CPI Property’s hybrid exchange, which introduced the innovative Type A hybrid format to investors.
The bank also led RCI Banque’s Additional Tier 1 bond, the first from an auto captive financing subsidiary, and the first green nuclear hybrid when EDF printed its €1.25bn perpetual non-call 5.5-year hybrid in September.