LCL S.A.
Crédit Lyonnais is a French bank. 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 to say 'yes' to your desires has been put to the extreme.
Crédit Lyonnais notably owned the MGM movie studio during a few years. Giancarlo Parretti was the chief of the studio at the time.
The finances have been sanitized by moving the debt into a new state-owned organism, Consortium de Réalisation or CDR.
More recently, the bank has been sold to Crédit Agricole.
Crédit Lyonnais is also involved in the Executive Life insurance scandal.