Crédit Agricole CIB • Emmanuel Bouvier d’Yvoire

Emmanuel Bouvier d’Yvoire

Global Head of Commercial Banking & Trade of Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (Crédit Agricole CIB, formerly Calyon) is Crédit Agricole's corporate and investment banking entity. With a staff of 12,000 employees in 32 countries, Crédit Agricole CIB is active in a broad range of capital markets, investment banking and financing activities. Clients are primarily corporations, governments, and financial institutions.

At which stage does CA CIB take action in signing large export contracts?

CA CIB provides services to both exporters and importers around the globe. This is what strengthens our organization in the field of international trade. We are present in all major countries with a worldwide network of professionals highly skilled in all areas of export and trade finance.

As is often the case in the defense business, we are brought into the process pretty far upstream by our exporting clients on prospective contracts with importing countries in which we have our own business contacts, often through a permanent local presence. We can also become aware of a business perspective before the exporter actually approaches us about it, thanks to our presence in the importing country. It is, for instance, the quality of our contacts with the Indonesian Ministry of Defense that allows us to provide quality information and support for our exporting clients in the defense sector. In every negotiation of a financing package supporting an export contract, the key factors of success are the long-standing business acquaintance of all the parties as well as a rigorous and innovative financial engineering capacity. Export finance is a highly technical area, as any buyer’s or supplier’s credit involves at least four parties: the exporter, the importer, the export credit agency that bears the majority of the commercial and political risk of the transaction, and the bank (or a pool of banks). The ability to bring together these actors and to write a well-drafted contractual documentation requires a level of expertise shared only by a small group of major international banks, probably no more than 20 worldwide, including Crédit Agricole.

A trend has emerged for some time now, whereby the importer increasingly often has the final word on the choice of the advising or financing bank. This makes the quality of our relationship with the major importers increasingly crucial.

What is the role does CA CIB play in financing?

We see ourselves as providers of global solutions to secure and finance international exchanges of goods and services. The “toolbox” to structure these solutions includes a wide range of financial instruments used to either guarantee the performance or the payment under a commercial contract (international guarantees, letters of credit, documentary collections) or to provide financing in connection with these contracts: factoring or forfaiting, i.e. the purchase/discounting of trade receivables, mostly on a non recourse basis and, for the medium/long term tenors, buyer’s or supplier’s credits, with a cover from an export credit agency such as COFACE in France or Euler Hermes in Germany. Foreign exchange, interest rate derivatives or cash management products are also frequent ingredients of our global offer.

In our view, the role of the bank is not just to sell products, but to advise our clients, at both ends of an international transaction, on the financing package that will best meet the objectives and accommodate the constraints of all parties.

The CSR issue is of paramount importance to Crédit Agricole

Does CA CIB also assist SMEs in the process of exportation?

CA CIB’s customers are mainly large corporate groups, but CA CIB’s teams are also available to assist other entities of the Crédit Agricole group to provide adapted support to their SME clients.

We should keep in mind, though, that some types of financing, for example buyer’s credits, are better suited to large contracts (for amounts expressed in multiples of 10 million dollars or euros) because of their relatively high structuring cost per transaction. When dealing with small contracts, we often encourage our clients to resort to “lighter” solutions such as confirmed (and possibly discounted) letters of credit or supplier’s credits.

Once again, being able to adapt the financing solution to the characteristics and the size of the underlying commercial contract is part of the bank’s responsibility towards its clients.

Are defense markets unique in respect to export?

The defense market is very specific, not necessarily in terms of specific technicalities in the structuring of financing packages, but simply because it is a highly sensitive environment and banks in general, and Crédit Agricole in particular, have the duty to act responsibly in this area. To that effect we have, for some time, developed strict and transparent compliance policies in this field as well as in others (nuclear energy, shale gas, etc.). Our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policy takes into consideration the Ottawa and Oslo treaties, as well as the existence of the European code of conduct on arms exports.

The CSR issue is of paramount importance to Crédit Agricole. Our compliance policy in the defense market is based on a classification of weapon types into three categories: first, “controversial” weapons which are essentially antipersonal mines and cluster bombs, second, “sensitive” arms (e.g. NBC weapons or arms of mass destruction) for which proliferation is tightly controlled in most jurisdictions, and third, other types of defense weapons and equipment.

For the first category, our policy is straightforward: we absolutely refuse to participate in any activity related to production, acquisition, storage, import, export, brokerage, financing, and so on of these weapons. As a result, we have a list of prohibited parties with whom we refuse to work because of their involvement in these activities. We remain extremely vigilant in this regard.

As for the second category, we do not finance international trade of these weapons or their launchers.

This means that we only intervene in the last category and, even there, we use very strict criteria. For any single transaction, we always refer to our compliance bodies in order to decide whether or not the bank’s involvement may be considered.

Does CA CIB only assist French manufacturers?

We are indeed a French institution but we are an international bank too. Therefore, we are obviously and naturally serving French exporters, but without any general rule of exclusivity: we often accompany some large international clients as well.

Being able to adapt the financing solution to the characteristics and the size of the underlying commercial contract is part of the bank's responsibility.