Crédit Agricole S.A.

Societe Generale gained 1.7%.

Banco BPM was up about 4.3%, rising after some media reports about Unicredit and also Credit Agricole.

They're reportedly assessing a joint takeover on the Italian lender.

Technology stocks advanced 1.7% as renewed appetite for AI-lifted chip-linked stocks such as Soitec and also Akestron.

Thank you very much.

So Ivan is the head of Debt Capital Markets Americas and global sponsor of US dollar DCM at Credit Agricole CIB.

Ivan has been with Credit Agricole CIB since 2017.

And before that, he was head of flow sales in global macro products at Credit Suisse.

and also head of government agency trading and origination for UBS.

the way to put it.

So Ivan, actually, that brings me to a question.

If next year is going to be eventful, and in terms of volatility, in terms of all these geopolitical pressures, The growing theme this year has been the whole AI funding thing, right? And Credit Agricole as well is a global bank, and you talk to clients all over the world.

Hmm.

So why don't you stake me, uh, and u- and us to, uh, with hundreds of millions of dollars, like $400 million, uh, and, you know, we'll buy distressed debt." I think it w- what distinguished them was, A, somehow their ability to get Credit Lyonna- Credit Lyonnais, which was, like, the royal bank of France at the time, uh, since, uh, merged into Credit Agricole because of its own blunders, uh, to back these guys who had just come out of Drexel, who had the stink on them.

It seemed very unlikely, but it happened.

They got the 400 million, then they got another 400 million, and, uh, they convinced the French, who are, you know, not necessarily the most creative, uh, thinkers when it comes to finance, to back Leon and his, uh, partners in buying distressed debt at a discount, and they all made a fortune.

So, again, Israeli tech company that had built that technology over the years went more global.

We have a significant presence in Europe, Spain and France in particular, Santander, Credit Agricole are big clients.

We have a number of clients that are banks, so traditional banks as you would think about down the street.

That said, we have a lot of other types of clients like Travelex in the money moving space, obviously, or Shift4 in the point of sale.

We have clients in Africa and UAE and Mexico.

And even when we have A-band clients, say, like a Santander or Credit Agricole, Our deployment is across multiple countries and multiple banks and multiple regions.

So one client looks like several or a bunch of implementations because all of this is done at the regulatory level, which is usually almost always country-based.

So we're transaction monitoring, screening, customer risk assessments.

French state-owned bank that doesn't exist anymore.

It's now part of Credit Agricole because of any number of foolish decisions that the management of Credit Lyonnais made, including, in effect, one thing that happened is...

The insurance commissioner of California, Mr. Garamendi, who's now in the U.S. Congress, had determined that he didn't want to sell the junk bond portfolio separately from the insurance company.

uh so the french in addition to providing the capital that uh apollo used to buy uh the six billion dollar port drunk barn portfolio three billion dollars the french uh also bought the insurance company what was left of the insurance company first executive for 300 million Now, that was not legal.

What's the euro situation? The repo market.

The large French banks led by BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, and Societe Generale, they are 20% of the repo market.

This is from the treasury.

If we get a euro issue, the market that's going to feel the brunt of it is France because the Japanese own a lot of French debt.

I use the example all the time of

whether you have an account at Wells Fargo in the U.S. or Credit Agricole in France or pick your bank locally, Dresdner Bank in Germany or any bank, if you had a checking or savings account at that bank, and you wrote an article or you made a statement or you did something that your policymakers didn't like and that bank froze your assets, just said, well, sorry, you're done.

You can't access that checking account anymore.

You would have a very hard time trusting that bank again.

France's CAC 40 firmed about 1% after sliding to a one-month low in the previous session when worries over the government's ability to rein in public finances ahead of next year's elections rattled investors.

French lenders Society Generale, PNB Paribas, and Credit Agricole rose between 1% and 1.9% after slumping in the prior session.

Still, fresh data underscored the challenges facing France's economy.

Second quarter GDP growth was revised down to flat from a preliminary 0.2% expansion, signaling weaker than expected momentum in the Eurozone's second largest economy.

Uh, the French benchmark fell 1.7%.

Uh, French lenders BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, and Credit Agricole slipped between 4 and 5%.

European banks led sector declines, falling 1.7%.

Among individual stocks, French spirits maker Pernod Ricard slipped almost 5% after reporting 2026 sales that slightly missed expectations, hurt by weakness in its US and China markets.