Henri Bonnet
Komerční banka Chairman and CEO
Société Générale Country Manager for the Czech Republic

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the website of the Komerční banka and Société Générale Group in the Czech Republic, intended for job applicants.

To be frank, I am also a new comer at Komerční banka. In September 2009, I became Komerční banka’s Chairman and CEO and at the same time Société Générale’s Country Manager for the Czech Republic. For me, this country and Komerční banka are a new chapter in my 40-years career with the Société Générale Group.

I would like now to share my first impressions with you, thereby presenting the Komerční banka Group to you.

Three months before taking over in my new position I started to visit our branches and meet with our clients and our colleagues of the network. KB’s branches, of which the bank has almost 400 throughout the country, was the main objective of these travels. Besides those 400 branches, almost 250 points of sale of our subsidiary Modrá pyramida, a building society, complete the network we put at the disposal of our clients. The Komerční banka Group is the second largest bank on the Czech market in terms of assets, and the third largest bank in the Czech Republic in terms of the number of clients. Also our affiliates are placed among major market players in their respective field of activity while increasing their share in, for example, consumer financing, life insurance and building saving.

The Komerční banka Group and Société Générale’s subsidiaries operating on the Czech market serve a total of 2.6 million clients in all segments, ranging from individuals to small businesses and corporations, as well as municipalities and state administration organisations. Our objective is to build long-term and transparent relationships with clients, covering their financial needs in all possible areas: current accounts, payments, loans ranging from consumer to business loans, deposit products (insurance, investments, term deposits), lease products, and other specific financial instruments. Thanks to our know-how, we regularly receive various awards; most recently, for example, we were elected as “The Corporate Bank of the Year 2008” in MasterCard award and Global Trade Review attributed us the Best Deal of 2008 for a pre-export financing facility in Kazakhstan.

We have only been able to achieve these successes thanks to our excellent workforce, who are the most important asset for us. Over those three months I had an opportunity to meet a number of colleagues from both the KB head office and the branch network and subsidiaries. Altogether almost 9,000 of them work in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  Our employees’ satisfaction is very important for us, and we are therefore doing our best to support them by offering both training courses and various schemes designed to help them harmonise their family and professional life. 

The banker’s work may be perceived as a boring and routine employment. I have been active in this job for more than 40 years now and I can assure you that I have never been bored and never experienced any routine. The traditional view of a banker as such no longer exists today: Société Générale Group offers you a wide range of opportunities in a number of professions: relationship manager, marketing specialist, HR consultant, IT specialist, data-miner, lawyer, credit analyst, etc., etc. If you succeed in the selection procedure and get an employment with our Group you will have opportunities to test various positions and professions during your career.

I look forward to meeting you soon, the new faces among the employees of the Komerční banka and Société Générale Group.