The head of Société Générale escaped the sack for a second time yesterday, despite pressure from the French Government for Daniel Bouton to be removed from his job after he presided over the world’s worst rogue trading scandal.

At a meeting yesterday, Société Générale’s board reaffirmed its confidence in Mr Bouton, the bank’s chairman and chief executive, and in his co-chief executive Philippe Citerne.

The unexpected move came after French politicians, including President Sarkozy, said that Mr Bouton should accept responsibility for the €4.9 billion (£3.65 billion) loss.

SocGen revealed last Thursday that Jérôme Kerviel, a junior trader, had amassed unauthorised trades with an underlying value of €50 million. Unwinding these trades on January 20 and 21, when global markets were plunging, took the bank to a multi-billion-euro loss.

It is the second time that SocGen’s board has backed Mr Bouton, who tendered his resignation shortly after Mr Kerviel’s activities had been discovered. In a statement, the board rebuffed Mr Sarkozy’s criticism, saying: “[Mr Bouton and Mr Citerne] have fully assumed their responsibilities since the start of this crisis . . . The board unanimously requested that Daniel Bouton and Philippe Citerne continue their mandate.”

The board’s vote failed to silence takeover speculation. Shares in France’s second-largest bank closed up more than 4 per cent at €81.80 amid French reports, denied by SocGen, that the bank was open to a friendly bid approach. BNP Paribas, its French peer, remains the most likely candidate to buy SocGen, but a spokeswoman for the troubled bank said yesterday that the board meeting had not discussed the possibility of being acquired.

The SocGen board also said yesterday that it had created a special committee of independent directors, led by Jean-Martin Folz, the former Peugeot Citroën chief executive, to ensure that the causes and sizes of the bank’s trading losses had been identified and to put in place measures to prevent a repeat of the unauthorised trades. The committee will work with the audit committee and will be assisted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Yesterday Christian Noyer, the Governor of the Banque de France, revealed that he had not advised the US Federal Reserve until Wednesday afternoon of the financial scandal at SocGen. There was speculation last week that the French bank’s huge sell-off of futures had prompted the Fed’s surprise decision to cut American interest rates.

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