In response to the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, the 38 members* of the Business for Inclusive Growth (B4IG) platform, including Caisse des Dépôts, are announcing unprecedented financial support for the economy and launching a collective call for a more inclusive, green and resilient recovery.
Since the start of the crisis, the members of the B4IG coalition have directed over €38bn in donations, funds and payment facilities towards their ecosystem, employees, clients and suppliers.
In partnership with governments, the banks in the B4IG coalition will provide financial support of over €35bn. Companies in the coalition have pledged to inject €1.9bn to support their client and supplier ecosystems. They have made €885mn in donations since the start of the epidemic and supplied 120 million items of protective medical Equipment.
Caisse des Dépôts will support strategic sectors, particularly those that are key to combating wide-scale pandemics, by bolstering the resources invested in specific funds. Along with leading insurance companies, it will mobilise and invest almost €2bn in equity and debt in strategic small- and medium-capitalisation companies via the Novi-Novo-Nova funds and new funds dedicated to the health sector.
The Caisse des Dépôts Group is fully mobilised to support the French economy in line with the measures taken by the government to limit the social and economic impact of the current health crisis as far as possible. By supporting the real economy, particularly through the system of state-guaranteed loans managed by our joint venture with the State through Bpifrance, we are adopting the measures necessary to ensure that French companies come out of this crisis as unscathed as possible. Social support is also required: in the early stages of the crisis, Caisse des Dépôts provided an additional €20bn in liquidity to secure the funds of the French social security organisations, which are experiencing a fall in contributions due to the contraction in economic activity. Some of our main subsidiaries remained active throughout the pandemic in order to provide essential public services on a daily basis: mail delivery (La Poste), electricity supply (RTE i.e. the French Transmission Grid) and local public transport (Transdev).
Eric Lombard, Chief Executive Officer of the Caisse des Dépôts Group
Read the press release and the appendix
B4IG is a global coalition operating under the auspices of the OECD, which aims to pool and bolster efforts by business to reduce inequalities relating to opportunities, gender and regional disparities, as well as to create greater synergies with government actions. Its current members include: Accenture, AXA, BASF, BNP Paribas, Groupe BPCE, Caisse des Dépôts, CareCentrix, Crédit Agricole, Danone, Engie, Goldman Sachs, Henkel, Ingka Group | IKEA Retail business, Johnson & Johnson, Kering, L’Oréal, Mars Incorporated, Michelin, Groupe Renault, Ricoh, Schneider Electric, Sodexo, Suez, UniCredit, Unilever, Veolia and Virgin.