No wonder they aren't sponsoring a team any more....

DavidBelcher

It's not often I read the Times business pages, but did spot a snippet today stating that Credit Agricole (the bank, obviously) had a 94% drop in profits over the last 12 months! No doubt they feel that doing away with luxuries such as sponsoring pro cycling squads are as good a start as any for a cost-cutting drive.

David

Kléber

They took the decision long before the profits vanished but you are right, the whole of Europe is sinking into a recession and it's going to be a very hard time being a below-average pro cyclist.

nolf

Well we may just slip into 2 quarters of succesive negative growth in GDP, but I don't think the "recessionistas" are correct in saying that the whole of Europe/US is going down. Mervyn King in his inflation rate report August estimated that GDP growth would be flat over the next year as the economy re-adjusts to higher energy prices, but after that the economy should fall back to it's base growth rate of around 2%.

A 94% drop in profits means they are still net profitable, depending on the profit calculation used. So it's not that bad. I feel more sorry for Merill Lynch who have managed to make the last 18 months losses equal a quarter of their net profit in the 34 years they've been a public limited company.

iainf72

Also, Credit Agricole are still involved in cycling via their sponsorship of the Tour with their LCL brand.

They took massive writedowns earlier this year (€6.5bn) and are not making a huge loss so they're in pretty good shape.