The presence of representatives of the European Central Bank at the meetings of the banks’ boards risks turning these meetings into a stage, making them practically useless, the president of the French bank Societe Generale Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.

“There is a risk that we are heading towards a play where people have a script that they are reading,” Lorenzo Bini Smaghi told a conference organized in Frankfurt. The motivation put forward by the ECB for such a presence, which is to analyze the behavior of the directors, is similar to the motivation of “the presence of psychologists in the room”, said the president of Societe Generale, adding that such a move could affect the normal functioning of the interaction between the other participants of the meeting boards.

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi’s public comments echo the criticism he addressed to the ECB in a private letter sent nearly a year ago. At the time, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi argued that the practice of supervisors participating in bank board meetings was intrusive and of little benefit.

Bini Smaggi, a former ECB official, made the comments at a conference attended by ECB executive board member Frank Elderson. He dismissed Bina Smagi’s criticism, saying there was a “misunderstanding” about why ECB officials were attending board meetings. It is not about monitoring participants or influencing board decisions, but rather about assessing the ability of governance bodies to challenge the management team. “While banks define their own culture and values, the supervisor’s role is to assess whether that culture is consistent with reasonable risk,” Elderson said.

Bini Smagi noted that the boards of banks are already regularly assessed by external consulting firms. A greater emphasis on the board’s ability to challenge the management team could escalate confrontations at meetings and even create the risk of managers leaving, according to Societe Generale’s president.

The Societe Generale Group is one of the largest European financial services groups with 117,000 employees in 66 countries and 25 million customers worldwide in three main areas of activity: Retail Banking in France, International Retail Banking, Insurance and Financial Services, Global Banking and solutions for investors. .

In Romania, BRD – Groupe Societe Generale manages a network of 441 branches and is the third largest bank in the local market.