- 2023/05/19
- 3 min
- 0
General Shareholders' meeting of Crédit Agricole S.A.
A Crédit Agricole S.A. General Shareholders' Meeting was held on Wednesday 17 May 2023 in Paris, attended by Chairman Dominique Lefebvre and Chief Executive Officer Philippe Brassac.
More than 1,400 people attended the Meeting either in person or remotely.
With quorum of 79.89%, the General Shareholders' Meeting approved all of the resolutions put to it by the Board of Directors. All resolutions approved obtained a score above 80%.
Nearly 17,340 shareholders voted prior to the General Shareholders' Meeting, with 74% of them voting online via Votaccess.
After approving the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022, the Ordinary General Shareholders' Meeting of Crédit Agricole S.A. decided to distribute a dividend of €1.05 per share.
The General Shareholders' Meeting appointed as Director Carol Sirou, Chair of EthiFinance, replacing Françoise Gri.
The General Shareholders' Meeting also renewed the directorships of Agnès Audier, Sonia Bonnet-Bernard, Marie-Claire Daveu, Alessia Mosca, Hugues Brasseur, Pascal Lheureux and Eric Vial. At the opening of the General Shareholders' Meeting, Dominique Lefebvre, Chairman of Crédit Agricole S.A., publicly thanked CA Ukraine's teams for their commitment to serving customers and the economy.
Philippe Brassac, Chief Executive Officer of Crédit Agricole S.A., devoted the first part of his presentation to the paradigm shift in the current economic and financial environment and reminded those present that the crises of certain banks were not synonymous with a crisis in the banking system. He then emphasised the virtues of the multi-universal bank model which offers to all types of customers, everywhere, via all channels, the full range of solutions to meet all their banking and asset needs as part of a comprehensive and lasting relationship.
In a second part devoted to the longer term, he insisted on the challenge of the energy transition. Crédit Agricole has chosen to support the transition of the whole of society; the easy way would be to green the Group's balance sheet, rather than contributing to greening the whole economy.
To do this, he presented a comprehensive equation in three complementary thrusts:
- Accelerate the advent of renewable and non-carbon energy. Crédit Agricole is already the leading private financier of renewable energy in France. Over the last two years, for every dollar taken out of fossil fuels, Crédit Agricole has deployed 4 euros in renewables.
- Equip the whole of society, making industrial innovations accessible to as many people as possible. Naturally mobilised to encourage the emergence of new solutions, Crédit Agricole is in line with the positive measures taken by the public authorities around the Green Re-industrialisation Project.
- Support an accelerated exit from fossil fuels by committing to quantified and dated Net Zero sectoral trajectories, and by supporting all stakeholders in their energy transition, such as energy companies that are committed to a necessary transformation towards renewable energies. In the absence of a public framework, Crédit Agricole took the decision at the end of 2022 not to finance any new oil exploration project and recalls that from the outset it refused to finance the EACOP project.
Philippe Brassac concluded his speech: "What is fundamentally the right course of action in a world of sometimes contradictory injunctions and challenges? At least that of humility: recognising that we don't really know, and in any case that we don't know definitively. Be responsive and able to adapt or revise our policies regularly. The fossil fuel sector accounts for just 1% of our revenues and results. It is not a financial issue for us. It is a question of responsibility."