History

In 1893, Societe Generale was the first foreign bank to set up in the Grand Duchy.
On the strength of its 130 years of history, the bank is today reaffirming its presence in the heart of Luxembourg with the inauguration of its new headquarters named “ARSENAL".
The design was entrusted to Georges Reuter Architectes, who came up with a building that meets the highest contemporary architectural standards.

In a construction project, demolition is paradoxically the most critical and nerve-racking phase - you never know what to expect! When we’re building, we have the plans, the design and the requirements, so we know where we’re going.  But when we have to demolish, we rarely know what we're going to come up against, and thus that was the major difficulty of this site, the demolition.

A construction site of this scale also has to deal with a number of contingencies.

This project has been hit by successive crises. The first one was the Covid crisis, which brought the project to a halt. Then we had the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, with shortages of raw materials and consequent difficulties in controlling supply deadlines. Despite all this, I would like to highlight that we delivered a building that met our expectations and, above all, completed on time. How was it possible? Because our teams were extremely committed and involved. There was a real team spirit regarding this project, so I'd like to congratulate everyone who took part and contributed to the Arsenal construction project.

First and foremost, I'd like to emphasise the human element. This is important as, ultimately, there cannot be success in construction without a team. And I wanted to reiterate this fundamental point.

At Societe Generale Luxembourg, the architectural vision is focused on employees’ well-being. Every detail of the new headquarters has been designed with respect for the environment and with a view to ensuring accessibility, flexibility and social interaction.

With Arsenal, Societe Generale Luxembourg is fully in line with the Societe Generale group's Corporate Social Responsibility policy. The Group's standards in this area are high. And obtaining our double environmental certification - HQE (level 'Excellent') and BREEAM (level 'Very good') - is a concrete example of our commitment to act as a responsible company.

Beyond this shared objective, it was important is to involve all the employees who would work on-site, by inviting them to come up with suggestions resulting in some very concrete measures. I'll randomly mention a few. Managing our impact, for instance. With a building in the very heart of the city, it was essential that all the employees were committed to reducing their footprint in terms of pollution, be it noise pollution, lighting pollution, all kinds of pollution. Another concrete example of this HQE approach is waste management, with a very practical application in terms of recycling. I would also mention the monitoring of water and electricity consumption, which has become essential in these times of high energy prices. Finally, I'd like to mention the re-use of materials extracted from the site, and in particular the soil that we have been able to re-use on other company projects.

Very early on, we integrated environmental considerations, which are extremely important to Societe Generale. Not only in the materials we use, but also in the image we want to project. In this building, which is clearly an urban building, we were keen to integrate elements of nature, and it seemed to us that the colour terracotta, which is naturally found in nature, would bring warmth and reflect environmental harmony.  

And the respect for the environment also applies to the design of the interior space.

During construction, we used high-quality materials, and for the finishing touches when fitting out the premises, we endeavoured to implement a circular economy. Our primary aim was to avoid waste. We had a lot of existing furniture at that time, and rather than throw it all away, we recovered around 80% of the existing furniture, which we were able to recycle and reintegrate into the space, giving it a second life.

We set up a co-construction process to fully involve employees in choosing the furniture and design, so that they would feel as comfortable as possible.

They are going to spend a third of each weekday there, so it's very important that it's both a place to work and a place to live.

And Societe Generale Luxembourg is proud of its strong connection with the country and its role in the development of the financial centre.

This project reflects Societe Generale group's strong commitment to Luxembourg, where we have been present for 130 years.

This new headquarters offers a truly remarkable professional environment for our employees, fully adapted to new working methods, with a much wider range of meeting rooms and collaborative spaces than before. The building is also a fine example of teamwork with our employees, but also with the builders and the partner authorities - the town hall in particular.

I am very pleased to have been able to authorise a new head office in the centre of our city for one of our oldest banks. It's true that the development of the financial centre has contributed a great deal to our city and our country on many levels: economically and financially, but also in human, cultural and, quite simply, societal terms. We are now a truly multicultural society, and I'm very pleased to see that investors also see this as an added value. It's their wealth, but above all it's the wealth of all those who have chosen to work and live here in Luxembourg City.

And I think that collectively, we can be extremely proud of this magnificent result.