Peugeot ex-chief Folz to drive SocGen committee

By Marcel Michelson

PARIS (Reuters) - Societe Generale, the French bank hit by a record rogue trader loss, on Wednesday put former car industry executive Jean-Martin Folz in charge of a special committee of directors to oversee an inquiry into the debacle.

Folz, who last year retired early as chief executive of Europe's second-biggest carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen after a series of profit warnings, once used a converted minivan as a mobile office as he travelled between client visits.

He still holds several supervisory board positions at retailer Carrefour, building materials group Saint-Gobain and industrial group Alstom.

Folz, born in Strasbourg in the northeast of France on January 11, 1947, was named the head of a three-strong committee of independent directors at Societe Generale on Wednesday.

The commission will have to make sure that the causes and sizes of the trading losses announced by the bank have been completely identified and that measures will be in place to prevent the reoccurrence these "incidents".

Other members are Jean Azema, the general manager of insurance firm Groupama, and Antoine Jeancourt-Galignani who was with insurers AGF, property group Gecina and banks Credit Agricole and Banque Indosuez.

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Folz, once an auto industry pace setter but who later presided over three profit warnings in little over a year, announced in September 2006 that he would retire when he turned 60 in January, 2007, after a decade at the top of the world's seventh biggest auto maker.