At the end of December 2015, Ivorian subsidiary of BRVM-listed firm Société Générale joined the top 30 companies in sub Saharan Africa by market capitalization, South Africa excluded, established by Hartland-Peel.

With $690 million of market capitalization at the end of the benchmark period, Cote d’Ivoire’s most important bank in terms of volume of assets ranked 26th on the list which was topped by Nigerian Dangote Cement, Kenyan telecom operator Safaricom, Nigerian subsidiary of Heineken (Nigeria Breweries) and Sonatel, the number one on BRVM.

Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, BRVM’s second market capitalization and first firm on the BRVM Composite index, is also in the rankings but Hartland-Peel preferred considering its greatest capitalization value knowingly the Nigerian market’s ($24 million on December 31, 2015).

Société Générale is therefore to be closely watched. Since January 1^st, it lost 8.6% and was trading at FCFA124,000 on January 22, 2016 against FCFA133,000 December ending. This drop is however not such a bad thing as it can be perceived in two different ways.

On one hand, it could be that some of its investors have acquired a plus-value. On another, a return on assets and on dividend of 35% and 4.8% have respectively been recorded, a rate which is higher than that of Cote d’Ivoire remuneration on deposits (3.5%). Hence, this decrease in rates improved PER which is now at 13.5x against 15x at the end of December 2015.