What took him so long? Since Société Générale lost €4.9bn on allegedly unauthorised futures trades in January last year, Daniel Bouton, chairman, has been under pressure to resign, not least from Nicolas Sarkozy, French president. To be fair, he offered to step down but the board kept him, albeit stripping his chief executive’s epaulettes and handing them to former finance director Frédéric Oudéa last May. If the board made the wrong call then – a sign it thought Mr Oudéa was not ready to fly solo – it must hope Mr Bouton’s resignation will lift the pall hanging over the bank since the Kerviel affaire.

Early in his tenure, things went better. Mr Bouton fended off a marauding BNP in 1999 and spearheaded the bank’s expansion into eastern Europe. Yet since last year’s trading loss, he has appeared débranché from investor sentiment, asleep at the controls. Another example of his detachment came when he and other directors accepted a slug of discounted stock options the same day that France took to the streets in a national strike. Mr Sarkozy put paid to that wheeze. Mr Bouton’s departure signals belated acknowledgment that he might be part of SocGen’s problem.