Crédit Lyonnais is a Frenchbank. It used to be the largest French bank, and it was state-owned.
History
During the 1990s it has been the subject of financial scandals, and created a huge debt of about 150 billion French francs by exaggerate investing, but mostly through subsidiaries. Their motto of the time, Le pouvoir de dire oui, literally the ability to say 'yes which more or less meant we can lend you money so that you can say 'yes' to your desires has been put to the extreme.
Crédit Lyonnais notably owned the MGM movie studio for a few years. Giancarlo Parretti was the chief of the studio at the time. Crédit Lyonnais is also involved in the Executive Life insurance scandal.
The finances have been sanitized by moving the debt into a new state-owned organism, Consortium de Réalisation (CDR).
In 2003, the bank was bought by Crédit Agricole. In 2004, the investment banking business of the bank was spun off to an existing subsidiary of Crédit Agricole, Crédit Agricole Indosuez, which was renamed CALYON. Crédit Lyonnais continues to exist as a retail consumer bank.
CreditLyonnais has long relied on two simple mechanisms to ensure its bloated growth: a ready supply of money-laundering deposits from the Cali cartel and similar sources, and financial infusions from the French government (which owns most of the bank) when all else fails.
Representative of this is CreditLyonnais' financing of Giancarlo Parretti's purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from Kirk Kerkorian in 1990 for $1.3 billion.
CreditLyonnais is trying to finagle its books so it can announce a first-half "profit" on October 3, to prove to its benefactors their miracle cure has worked.
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