With more than 13,000 professionals comprised in 58 countries, Calyon specialises in the businesses of capital markets and investment and corporate banking.
With a Chair in Finance at Université Paris - Dauphine, Calyon helps provide innovative solutions
As the product of a partnership with Université Paris - Dauphine and EDF, the Chair in Quantitative Finance and Sustainable Development demonstrates the depth of Calyon's commitment to sustainable development and the search for innovative solutions.
Re-thinking economic and financial instruments
Economic and political players are starting to realize that the planet’s future growth will depend on our societies’ ability to produce the most effective solutions to major challenges, such as climate change and exhaustion of natural resources. In order to create favorable conditions for action in the context of a break with past trends, it is necessary to re-think economic and financial instruments as the drive train of the system.
The Chair in Quantitative Finance and Sustainable Development was created in 2006 by Calyon, in partnership with EDF and Université de Paris – Dauphine, in answer to this objective. It reflects Calyon’s will to create a balance that reconciles the economy, the environment and social criteria.
Under the aegis of the Europlace Institute of Finance, the Chair brings together the best international specialists in mathematics and quantitative finance on the one hand, and in sustainable development and the environment on the other. It received authorization from the William J. Clinton Foundation in the framework of the Clinton Global Initiative.
Bringing together the best specialists
These objectives set by the Scientific Committee, chaired by Pierre-Louis Lions, served as the foundation for a detailed action plan which is based on three lines of research:
- consideration of the long / very long term: new methods in assets / liabilities management, and risk and discount rate management,
- measuring and valuing externalities: prices of CO2 quotas, criteria for quantifying socially responsible investment and certain specific dynamics,
- finite resources: tools for evaluating and hedging risks in these markets.
Though of recent creation, the Chair has already brought several projects to fruition, thanks to the enthusiasm of the researchers. Calyon extends special thanks to Pierre-Louis Lions, Jean-Michel Lasry, Jan Horst Keppler, Roger Guesnerie, Christian Gouriéroux, Gilles Chemla, Jean-Michel Marin, Bertrand Villeneuve and Luciano Campi.
Cooperation was also initiated with research centers and institutions working on themes relevant to the Chair: the International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis in Dallas, the laboratories of the Universities of British Columbia (Vancouver), Princeton and Columbia, as well as the Climpact company. Steps to broaden the Chair to the Ecole Polytechnique are also being finalized, establishing a network of world-leading teams on the subjects under study by the Chair.
Putting techniques of finance to work for sustainable development
A colloquium entitled "Finance and sustainable development: opponents or partners?" was held in November 2007 in Monaco. It demonstrated the value of putting financial institutions’ accumulated experience in market-based solutions to work to further the goals of sustainable development, on the condition that these solutions are adapted. The colloquium was organized by the Chair in collaboration with the Monaco Mediterranean Foundation, under the patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco.
The Chair’s work will be broadly disseminated and explained through colloquia, teaching opportunities and publications. Special attention is focused on wide and rapid distribution. A series of pre-publication notebooks to make scientific findings available in paper and electronic form has been launched.
The Chair’s research will provide substance for Calyon’s internal dialogues aimed at defining the best-suited financial instruments for fully meeting clients’ sustainable development objectives. The research will thus help to make sustainable development more and more central to all of Calyon’s business lines.