Paris, 13 September 2007

LCL, a leading French retail bank, has joined forces with the country's national employment agency, ANPE, to handle the planned recruitment of 3,000 people during the period 2008-2010. Most of these vacancies will be for commercial positions, such as customer service agents, tele-advisers and relationship officers, based in LCL's network of some 2,000 branches. All the new hires will be offered open-ended employment contracts.

Christian Charpy, General Manager of ANPE, and Christian Duvillet, Chief Executive of LCL, signed a nationwide agreement on 12 September 2007 setting out the arrangements for this partnership.

The recruitments will cover a diversity of profiles - especially in terms of age, training and experience - and will also include disabled people. The system of block-release training, already used widely at LCL, will be expanded.

The partnership between LCL and ANPE will focus on targeting, identifying and assessing job applicants based on a joint analysis of the bank's quantitative and qualitative recruitment needs and the make-up of the local labour market.

A service for short-listing applicants on the basis of job and skill profiles will be developed. It will rely in particular on simulation recruitment, a method in which applicants are given tests to identify their capabilities so that they are recruited on the strength of their skills, not their experience or educational qualifications.

Starting in October 2007, LCL and ANPE will jointly conduct a territorial analysis of expected labour and skills requirements in order to anticipate manpower demand more effectively. This analysis will be conducted yearly and updated at regular intervals.

LCL will also notify ANPE of its job vacancies in connection with block-release programmes for the vocational training of jobseekers. The bank has also undertaken to arrange a vocational integration and training scheme so that recruits can adapt to and maintain their jobs and hone their professional skills.

The ANPE will organise its on-the-job support services to ensure that new recruits are integrated smoothly into the LCL workforce.

ANPE and LCL will carry out a quantitative and qualitative annual review focusing on the number of applicants interviewed by LCL and their profile, as well as on LCL's level of satisfaction with the candidates put forward by ANPE.

About LCL
LCL joined the Crédit Agricole S.A. group in 2003. Its nationwide retail banking network now focuses on individual, professional and small business customers in France. LCL has:

• 6 million customers and net banking income of €3.6 billion
• 23,000 employees, including more than 14,000 in a network of 2,000 branches serving individual and business customers
• more than 5,000 people recruited on open-ended contracts over the past five years
• 10 regional divisions in France, each responsible for its own recruitment
• long-standing (since 1989) and increasing reliance on block-release training, with nearly 1,000 people currently on apprenticeship and vocational training contracts
• awarded gender-equality certification in 2006; the Agefiph Accord on disabled employees has been implemented in the Crédit Agricole S.A. group.
  
  About ANPE
  L'Agence Nationale Pour l'Emploi (ANPE) is France's national employment agency:
• 22 regional divisions and 120 delegations with a staff of nearly 28,000
• 824 local branches and specialised departments, 1,700 professional teams specialised by business sector
• more than 3.5 million job offers notified by companies in 2006, with more than 3 million recruitments
• expertise in all areas of employment: recruitment, guidance, training, labour market entry, job development
• the leading job-related website in France, www.anpe.fr, with • nearly 12 million hits per month in 2006 • 587,000 job offers posted directly by employers in 2006 (16.8% of online offers)
• a focus on delivering a high standard of needs-related services to its clients as part of a drive to secure quality certification for all its local branches
• committed under the Public Service Charter for Employment to oppose discrimination, support equal opportunities and promote diversity and gender equality in employment