Third-quarter revenues from the equity and advisory businesses of Société Générale's investment banking division, which announced over 200 redundancies earlier this week, fell by 57% compared with the previous quarter.

A strong performance in the group's retail banking division partially offset the sharp downturn in investment banking revenues and group net banking income fell to €3.29bn ($3.3bn), a 3% fall in relation to the third quarter of 2001. Over the same period gross operating income rose 4% to €878m.