BNP Paribas CFO ducks SocGen bid questions

PARIS (Reuters) - The chief financial officer of French bank BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) ducked questions on speculation that BNP may bid for rival Societe Generale (SOGN.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in an analysts' call on Wednesday.

Last week, SocGen announced 4.9 billion euros ($7.24 billion) of losses which it said was caused by a rogue trader.

SocGen's weakened position has reignited speculation that BNP Paribas might bid for it.

Analysts pressed SocGen's finance chief to comment on BNP's intentions towards SocGen, which it tried to buy in 1999.

"We have had no time. When they published their announcement our first priority was to avoid the risk of being tarred by the same brush so we decided to immediately issue a statement and to publish very rapidly our results," Philippe Bordenave said.

"Since then, it was last Thursday, my team and I have worked around the clock to get the figures that we are publishing today. During that very short timeframe I have not had much time to elaborate much further on SocGen."

He later added: "There are legal procedures under way which have attracted a huge amount of media attention so this is another reason why I don't want to comment on SocGen."

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta)