The French bank also announced a return on equity of 8.4 percent for the year and said that its common equity tier 1 ratio (Basel III) - how much money the bank holds compared to its assets - stood at 10 percent. It added that it would look to pay a dividend of 1 euro per share back to shareholders and is targeting a dividend payout ratio of 40 percent for 2014, up 27 percent from the year before.  Reuters cited CEO Frederic Oudea as saying that the group's bonus pool for employees had been reduced, in stark contrast to U.K. bank Barclays which announced a 10 percent rise in its compensation costs for 2013.  (Read more: Guess who were the unlikely bank earnings' winners)  Cabannes also told CNBC that he was looking forward to the European Central Bank's banking stress tests which began in November. The ECB will publish health tests of Europe's biggest banks before it takes on the task of supervising them. To take the burden of rescuing banks off the shoulders of governments, European leaders agreed to create a system that would move supervision of the financial sector to a European level, and the bank stress tests are seen as an important step towards this "banking union".  Cabannes said the exercise would have no major impact on SocGen and would give more transparency and more trust in the European banking union.  "It will harmonize and standardize the different ways that regulation is implemented in each country. So for us it's a very positive process which would stop the fragmentation process of the European banking market which is a key element for Europe," he said.  Follow us on Twitter: @CNBCWorld
French banking group Societe Generale reported full-year earnings on Wednesday which failed to meet market expectations but came in three times higher than the previous year.