Santander, SocGen Both Lean on Disposals to Move the Numbers
Portfolio sales, not underlying business performance, drove the one-off capital and cost moves at both reporting global systemic banks this quarter.
Every reporting bank with a grounded one-off GSB-14 driver fact this quarter pointed to the same lever: selling something. Santander and Société Générale, the two reporting banks with grounded one-off GSB-14 driver facts, both attributed a portfolio disposal to their one-off moves, a clean 2-of-2 sweep for the M&A and portfolio-actions category.
Santander's disposal in Poland added 95 basis points to its CET1 ratio. Société Générale's disposal showed up on the cost line instead of the capital line: disposals for an amount of EUR 41 million, a decrease in transformation costs of EUR 8 million, and a reversal of IFRIC 21 taxes for EUR 36 million, stacking into a costs-down result with no single extracted figure of its own.
Two banks, two different balance-sheet levers, one identical playbook. When the entire reporting cohort's one-off drivers trace back to disposals rather than organic swings, the quarter's capital and cost improvements owe more to what each bank chose to sell than to what it chose to run.