Group news / Crédit Agricole CIB supports Ile de France Mobilités with its new green bond

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Monday, 25 March 2024

Crédit Agricole CIB supports Ile de France Mobilités with its new green bond

CACIB acted as lead manager on the €1-billion green bond with a 25-year maturity which inaugurates Ile de France Mobilités’ new financing framework. This issue will enable this key environmental transition player, based in the most highly populated and densest part of France, to rise to second place among the largest French green issuers since 2021, excluding sovereign.

The aim is to enable the company to refurbish and replace urban and suburban passenger road transport such as network buses and cable car cabins. It will also be used to improve the rolling stock on public rail transport (trains, metros, trams) or even the associated infrastructure, and more generally to improve the quality of transport services available to people in the Paris region. All vehicles and infrastructure financed are dedicated to low-carbon public transport.

CPRAM has published its responsible investment survey, produced for the fifth year running in partnership with Insight AM. The survey, which combines the views of retail investors and financial advisors, highlights three major shifts: regulation appears to be acting as an accelerator for advisors; perceptions of recent climate events seem to have influenced the choice of preferred investment themes within the responsible investment universe; and efforts to educate investors and provide explicit proof of the impact of investments need to continue in order to reach a wider audience. The findings show that “responsible” funds are now established as widely held financial products (44% of respondents have investments in such funds, compared with 36% in 2022) and that the top investment themes are the environment and the climate. Meanwhile, 42% and 41% of retail investors respectively think funds should take into account environmental issues and the importance of local production and consumption.

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After a six-year absence, BforBank is bursting back onto the TV advertising scene on TF1, M6, France TV and digital terrestrial channels from 25 March to 14 April and from 22 April to 12 May. The “Le Mytho” TV ad has been polished up for the occasion and will highlight a number of points that boost the brand’s appeal, including the improved interest rate on “Livret A” savings accounts, the welcome bonus and real-time expenditure tracking. The live TV ads will be backed up by a digital media campaign spanning social media, YouTube, and catch-up services TF1 Replay and M6 Replay, making for an all-out communications blitz over the six-week period.

Crédit Agricole Transitions & Énergies, via Unifergie, has arranged €30 million in senior debt financing for a portfolio of 44 solar power plants on large industrial rooftops in the Piedmont region. The project has been developed by German renewable energy producer Coversol, which has agreed a 20-year feed-in tariff with the Italian Government, in addition to which part of the plants’ output will be reserved for self-consumption by building owners. The 58,600 solar panels will generate around 35 GWh of power a year, preventing nearly 7,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions every year.

Employee Savings Week

25 to 29 March

Amundi’s Employee Savings & Pensions team is committed to backing an initiative by Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF, the French financial markets authority), the Department of Labour and Association Française de la Gestion Financière (AFG, the French asset management association): Employee Savings Week.
The aim is to raise awareness among businesses of the benefits of putting in place mechanisms for sharing value with their employees and to remind employees that they can use employee savings schemes to build up medium- and long-term savings.

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€4.4bn

That’s the record amount of funding raised by French CleanTechs* in 2023, up €1 billion from the previous year. The renewable energy sector led by a substantial margin, raising €2.1 billion and accounting for 39 out of a total of 181 deals. In second place came the mobility sector, which raised €1.1 billion through 25 deals, including the biggest single deal in any sector, through which battery manufacturer Verkor raised €850 million to build a gigafactory in Dunkirk. Lastly, energy efficiency took third place, raising €409 million.

* Businesses and technologies that encourage sustainable development and respect for the environment.

Source: France Invest & Group Economics

50 years ago

The original patent for the chip card was filed on 25 March 1974. Described as an “electronic order process and device”, the one-millimetre-thick plastic card with integrated circuits was invented by Frenchman Roland Moreno. It was another seven years before it was first used as a means of payment, after which it went on to be used for a variety of other purposes: mobile phones, building access cards, transport passes, etc. It is estimated that nearly 100 billion cards have been produced since 2014.