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Financial institution in France From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SFIL, known until 2015 as Société de Financement Local, is a French public credit institution spun off in February 2013 from the publicly rescued Dexia. SFIL operates in local public sector financing and large export credit contracts refinancing, in commercial partnership with publicly owned bank La Banque Postale (LBP). Since 2020 it has been fully owned by Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC), France's major public financial institution, but for a single share still held by the French state.
SFIL has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank.[1][2]
Dexia sold the Société de Financement Local (SFIL) for one euro in January 2013,[3] following which the bank's new shareholders were the French state (75 percent), CDC (20 percent), and LBP (5 percent). The transferred operations included the Dexia Municipal Agency, a debt-issuing vehicle, which was subsequently renamed the Caisse Française de Financement Local (Caffil). Through Caffil, SFIL became the owner of the outstanding €90 billion in troubled loans previously granted by Dexia to the public sector, including €9.4 billion of structured credits.[4]
In May 2015, the French government directed SFIL to expand its operations to refinancing of major export credit contracts (above 70 million euros) guaranteed by Bpifrance Assurance Export, the export guarantee arm of Bpifrance. The name change from Société de Financement Local to SFIL reflected that expansion of the bank's scope of activity. Also in 2015, the bank made profits for the first time.[5]
In 2017, SFIL became the leading liquidity provider for state-guaranteed export credit, with 50 percent market share. SFIL operates in partnership with all commercial banks active in French export credit.
In March 2018, the government extended SFIL's export system to strategic projects carried out by French companies abroad benefiting from a public guarantee.
In 2013–2017, SFIL and its fully-owned subsidiary Caffil raised more than 31 billion euros in long-term financing. As such, Sfil/Caffil was the second-largest public bond issuer in France, behind the government itself. Caffil refinances medium-term and long-term loans made by LBP (in partnership with the Caisse des Dépôts) to local authorities and public hospitals.
In 2019, the Caisse des Dépôts announced it would acquire all SFIL equity held by the French state and LBP, thus becoming the bank's sole shareholder except for a single share kept by the state.[5] The transaction was completed in September 2020.[6]
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