There is no money in the Fund of deposits

Rescue of Dexia, purchase of 10,000 dwellings by the NIS, mobilization of funds from savings to banks and SMEs. The Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations was on all fronts last week. In an interview with the "Echos", Michel Bouvard, President of the Supervisory Board, justify these interventions. It will explain this week before the Finance Committee of the Assembly with the Director-General of the institution, Augustin de Romanet.

Is it legitimate to invest or make available such sums to help banks, property developers, SMEs

We are now in a situation of exceptional crisis. In this period, person would understand that a public institution with financial capacities such as the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations make as if he had gone there. In his speech of Toulon, Nicolas Sarkozy has set priorities housing, support for SMEs, environmental infrastructure which are exactly those defined in the strategic plan Elan 2020 of the CDC. We are therefore quite legitimate to respond to the expectations of the State in amplifying our commitment. Dexia, the commitment of the CDC is first that of a substantial shareholder which preserves the value of its assets. It is limited to EUR 2 billion, the Government understood that the Fund could not expose themselves more. Recapitalisation allows, with the State, to hold a blocking minority and on the strategic choices. Finally for developers, this is for the Fund to resume via its subsidiary, the NIS, 10,000 housing which found no takers. It will increase its heritage and meet the needs of the French housing while avoiding an increase in the real estate crisis. This is a relevant commitment we had already made in the previous real estate crisis.

Is the Caisse des Dépôts the France sovereign Fund

The CDC is not a sovereign wealth Fund in the sense where it is usually. However, it may be an instrument of economic sovereignty. The CDC model that some, there is still little time, viewed as old-fashioned is adapted in the storm.

These initiatives have been taken in good agreement with the Elysee Palace, Matignon and Bercy, including on the question of the use of regulated savings funds

There were strong demands of the Government. With the Director General, we have agreed that there should be an answer adapted from the CDC to the speech from Toulon on which the monitoring commission would be to speak Wednesday. The influx of savings regulated since the beginning of the year to redeploy a portion of it to banking networks to enable them to continue their activity of loans to economic actors. We wanted to do from the booklet of sustainable development and the popular savings booklet, whose jobs are already defined in this sense, rather than from A booklet. It is a transitional since device from January 1, it is the law of modernization of the economy that will apply to regulated savings. The needs of social housing funded by the booklet are therefore totally preserved.

Some see it as a diversion of people's savings.

They are not subsidies to banks and the Prime Minister was very explicit on this point in his speech Friday. It's to give them the means to pursue their activity of lender. But I will be particularly attentive to that these funds are actually used by SMEs. We will give us the means to check. I also hear that the rule of the centralization of the funds of A booklet to 70 by the Caisse des Dépôts is applied on 1 January.

You've spent almost a year of investment in the recapitalisation of Dexia. Did you not lose any flexibility for the future

Non. Each of the entities of the CDC Group will intervene in the amount of its share in the recapitalisation of Dexia and this does not affect our margins of manoeuvre for the future, even if this will weigh on the 2008 result and if the State will have to take it into account. However, the CDC will not commit to such amounts regularly. There is no money in the Fund of deposits.