EIB and Crédit Agricole CIB launch €600m guarantee portfolio for European grid suppliers

The European Investment Bank will provide up to €300m of counter-guarantees to Crédit Agricole CIB, enabling the French bank to create a portfolio of guarantees of up to €600m for companies manufacturing equipment for Europe’s electricity grids.

Crédit Agricole CIB will commit an equivalent amount alongside the EIB risk support, with guarantees issued on behalf of its industrial clients as they undertake new investment linked to grid development across the European Union.

The structure is expected by the EIB to mobilise as much as €2.4bn of investment in the real economy.

That €2.4bn figure is an expected investment effect, not the value of the bank guarantee portfolio or funding already provided. The contractual financing structure consists of up to €300m of EIB counter-guarantees supporting a guarantee portfolio of as much as €600m.

The transaction is designed to increase Crédit Agricole CIB’s capacity to support manufacturers of equipment needed for electricity transmission and distribution.

For the bank, part of the risk attached to guarantees issued for those clients is transferred to the EIB. The development bank says that risk sharing should free additional capacity for Crédit Agricole CIB to support companies supplying the grid-investment programme.

The arrangement is backed by InvestEU and sits within the EIB’s €1.5bn Energy Grids Package, which was established to support expansion, modernisation and reinforcement of electricity networks across the EU.

The EIB and Crédit Agricole CIB already have a separate relationship in wind energy, including a €1bn guarantee portfolio agreed in December 2025. The latest transaction extends the risk-sharing model into the manufacturers supplying grid infrastructure.

Pricing charged to participating companies, individual guarantee limits, guarantee types, tenors and the identity of initial beneficiaries have not been disclosed.

For working-capital and trade-finance providers, the structure is relevant because large equipment manufacturers can consume substantial bank guarantee capacity when bidding for, executing and expanding infrastructure programmes.

The transaction therefore uses multilateral risk sharing to increase the amount of guarantee support a commercial bank can provide to industrial suppliers, rather than delivering a conventional €600m loan to the sector.