PARIS - French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) said it was close to reaching a definitive deal with rival Dexia (DEXI.BR) over buying Dexia's 20 percent stake in Credit du Nord to give SocGen full control.

Societe Generale is close to an agreement with Dexia over the acquisition of the 20 percent of Credit du Nord, but there are still a few details to sort out, a SocGen spokeswoman told Reuters late on Thursday.

SocGen said earlier in October that it had already begun talks with Dexia over the buyout of French retail bank Credit du Nord and that it expected to complete the deal before the end of the year.

A source familiar with the talks told Reuters that Dexia's 20 percent stake in Credit du Nord was valued at between 600 million euros ($882.5 million) and 700 million euros.

The planned sale of the Credit du Nord stake is part of an ongoing restructuring at Dexia in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Dexia received 6.4 billion euros from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and key shareholders in September 2008. It later won state guarantees for its new borrowing and to cover riskier securities linked to subprime mortgages.

Dexia's problem was that a large part of its long-term lending relied on short-term interbank borrowing, a market that dried up during the credit crisis.

($1=.6799 Euro)