January 3rd, 2007

Groupe Danone's board of directors will be asking shareholders attending the next general meeting to set up a fund to support businesses that aim to be profitable but make social and societal goals rather than earnings their first priority.

This fund will be named danone.communities. It will focus investments on business projects with a significant social impact and consistent with Groupe Danone's mission of bringing health through food to a majority of people. The projects will be in areas where Danone can concretely add value by mobilizing its resources and the competencies of its staff and partners.

The social impact of projects on local communities will be assessed on the basis of indicators that include their contributions to public health, the reduction of malnutrition, and the alleviation of poverty, with due regard for environmental and social impacts. The fund will be particularly attentive to the social efficiency of capital investments and the scope for international deployment of the projects concerned.

The fund's first investment will be to support the development and deployment of the Grameen Danone project in Bangladesh. Looking ahead, the funds aims to be in a position to make a limited number of investments each year in highly innovative ventures in different parts of the world.

The funds set up and supported by Danone will be the first social business fund founded at the initiative of an industrial group. Interested Groupe Danone shareholders will be able to reinvest all or part of their dividends in the fund in the form of "social dividends." Group employees, in particular those in France, will be able to invest part of their profit-sharing entitlements in the fund, which will be included among the options offered for their investments. The fund will also be open to individual investors and institutions sharing an interest in this approach to development.

Source: AMOnline [1]