Following the adoption in France of the law for transparency and modernization of the economy, which modifies the hierarchy of creditors' claims, French banking group Credit Agricole intends to issue its inaugural senior nonpreferred notes. We believe the proposed notes would be subject to conversion or write-down in a resolution after junior instruments, but before more senior obligations, including senior preferred notes. A potential bail-in of the proposed notes will not cause a default of the bank, in our view. We are assigning our 'BBB+' issue rating to the proposed notes. The rating is one notch lower than our assessment of Credit Agricole's stand-alone credit profile (SACP), owing to our view that the proposed notes are subordinated to more senior
