Crédit Agricole Group , sometimes called "la banque verte" (English: "The green bank") due to its historical ties to farming, is the world's largest cooperative financial institution.
It consists of a network of Crédit Agricole local banks, the 39 Crédit Agricole regional banks, and a central institute, the Crédit Agricole S.A. It was founded on November 5, 1894.
In 1990, it became an international full-service banking group. It is listed through Crédit Agricole S.A., an intermediate holding company, on Euronext Paris' first market and is part of the CAC 40 stock market index.
Local banks of the group owned the regional banks, in turn the regional banks majority owned the S.A. via a holding company, in turn the S.A. owned part of the subsidiaries of the group, such as LCL, the Italian network and the CIB unit.
By now, the group is the number-one bank in France with 28% of the domestic market, the global number-two by revenues and number-ten by profits, according to Fortune magazine, and number-15 worldwide according to Forbes rankings.
According to en.wikipedia
