Société Générale S.A., colloquially known in English-speaking countries as SocGen, is a French multinational universal bank and financial services company founded in 1864. It is registered in downtown Paris and headquartered nearby in La Défense. Société Générale is France's third largest bank by total assets after BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole. It is also the sixth largest bank in Europe and the world's eighteenth. It is considered to be a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. It has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank. From 1966 to 2003 it was known as one of the Trois Vieilles major French commercial banks, along with Banque Nationale de Paris and Crédit Lyonnais. Wikipedia