Credit Agricole slammed over "greenwash" ads

Anyone who has visited the websites of some of the world's largest business titles in recent months will be familiar with the advert.

The silence is interrupted by unmistakable tones of James Bond himself, Sean Connery, dramatically declaring it is time to head "Back to common sense. It's time for green banking".

Of course, it would also be common sense for the company behind the campaign, French banking giant Credit Agricole, to check whether it really qualifies as a "green bank" before embarking on such a high-profile global campaign.

The bank is now bracing itself for a series of complaints to advertising regulators around the world, after Friends of the Earth slammed the campaign as the "absolutely the worst case of greenwash we've ever seen".

According to reports in the Sunday Times yesterday, the environmental group is working with French NGO France Nature Environment to put together a dossier that will be submitted to France's advertising standards board detailing how the company invests heavily in fossil fuel industries and has failed to substantiate its claim that it is moving towards "green banking".

The dossier will provide evidence that the bank's investment arm, Calyon, is one of the world's leading investors in oil exploration and fossil fuel extraction in developing economies. Most notably it was part of a consortium that invested in Trafigura, the Swiss oil giant at the centre of a high-profile toxic waste dumping scandal last year, and has also invested heavily in Tullow Oil, a company involved in developing new oil fields in Ghana and Uganda.

Credit Agricole told the Times that the advertising campaign was intended to focus on how the company is shifting towards focusing more on " responsible and ethical" practices. The bank also said that it had signed up to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and was listed on the FTSE4Good index of green companies.

The revelations come just days after a major report from PwC found that those banks, including Credit Agricole, which had signed up to the Climate Group's Climate Principles for green investment had struggled to enact policies that curb investments in carbon-intensive projects.