Reinforcing our environmental sponsorship

Objectives
  • Further develop the Group's environmental sponsorship.
  • Heighten Group support for environmental projects.
Priority in 2009:
  • Continue to implement the Group's sponsorship policy.
2008 highlights:
  • Review of the 2006-2008 partnership with the Nicolas Hulot Foundation for Nature and Humanity.
  • Donation of € 382,000 to environmental projects in 2008.
Société Générale is just as committed to integrating the environment in its business and activities as it is to supporting environmental projects.
Coherent, lasting initiatives
Société Générale's environmental sponsorship focuses on local, regular action and, from 2006-2008, included the "Water Program" of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation for Nature and Humanity.
To ensure the coherence and long-term future of its actions, Société Générale Group has defined an environmental sponsorship policy based around 3 core issues:
  • climate change: a headline-news, transverse subject, with the bank already involved in several initiatives,
  • biodiversity: an increasingly prominent issue with major economic consequences that will prompt the creation of future financial instruments,
  • water: a third and major priority in the financing and investment strategies of the Group's different businesses and for its retail network outside France in countries that suffer from drought conditions.
Like the Group, Société Générale's sponsorship has a global reach but is also firmly rooted in the bank's culture and guiding principles of coherence, subsidiarity, synergies and innovation.
Dedicated resources
Société Générale donated € 382,000 to environmental sponsorship in 2008, a substantial increase on the last 4 years (not counting the exceptional donation of € 425,000 to Komercni Banka in 2007 following a natural disaster).
In 2009, sponsorship will be deployed at an operating level: selection of new projects to support, exchange of best practices, implementation of tools to help entities manage their sponsorship, recognition amongst all staff of the importance of the environment, etc. It will primarily take three forms:
  • a project-based approach,
  • the encouragement of initiatives within local entities,
  • the combining of financial expertise (from Société Générale employees) and field expertise (from local partners).