With about 13,000 professionals comprised in more than 50 countries, Crédit Agricole CIB specialises in the businesses of capital markets and investment and corporate banking.
With a Chair in Finance at Université Paris - Dauphine, Crédit Agricole CIB helps provide innovative solutions
As the product of a partnership with Université Paris - Dauphine and EDF, the Finance and Sustainable Development Chair demonstrates the depth of Crédit Agricole CIB's commitment to sustainable development and the search for innovative solutions in concrete link with finance.
Re-thinking economic and financial instruments
In order to create favorable conditions for action in the context of a break with past trends, it is necessary to re-think economic and financial instruments as the drive train of the system.
The Chair in Quantitative Finance and Sustainable Development was created in 2006 by Crédit Agricole CIB, in partnership with EDF and Université de Paris – Dauphine, in answer to this objective. It reflects Crédit Agricole CIB’s will to create a balance that reconciles the economy, the environment and social criteria.
Under the aegis of the Europlace Institute of Finance, the Chair brings together the best international specialists in mathematics and quantitative finance on the one hand, and in sustainable development and the environment on the other. It received authorization from the William J. Clinton Foundation in the framework of the Clinton Global Initiative.
Bringing together the best specialists
These objectives set by the Scientific Committee, chaired by Pierre-Louis Lions, served as the foundation for a detailed action plan which is based on three lines of research:
- consideration of the long / very long term: new methods in assets / liabilities management, and risk and discount rate management,
- measuring and valuing externalities: prices of CO2 quotas, criteria for quantifying socially responsible investment and certain specific dynamics,
- finite resources: tools for evaluating and hedging risks in these markets.
Cooperation was also initiated with research centers and institutions working on themes relevant to the Chair: the International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis in Dallas, the laboratories of the Universities of British Columbia (Vancouver), Princeton and Columbia, as well as the Climpact company.
Putting techniques of finance to work for sustainable development
With its extension to Ecole Polytechnique in 2008, the Chair operated at full capacity for the first time. The program comprises 22 scientific researchers and 15 doctoral candidates. A large volume of scientific research was carried out last year, including very promising work involving models that incorporate sustainable development.
The Chair’s work is broadly disseminated and explained through colloquia, teaching opportunities and publications. Special attention is focused on wide and rapid distribution. A series of pre-publication notebooks to make scientific findings available in paper and electronic form has been launched.
The Chair’s research provides substance for Crédit Agricole CIB’s internal dialogues aimed at defining the best-suited financial instruments for fully meeting clients’ sustainable development objectives. The research thus helps to make sustainable development more and more central to all of Crédit Agricole CIB’s business lines.
