Cummins does not just run on diesel and PR fluff. It runs on other people’s money. Pension funds, insurers, asset managers, banks. People in expensive suits who cream fees off the top while pretending to be guardians of the system.

One of those is Natixis. The Paris based corporate and investment bank parked under Groupe BPCE that spent the last decade ping ponging between scandal, fine, rebrand, repeat.

According to recent US portfolio disclosure coverage, Natixis now holds around 85,019 Cummins shares, worth roughly 27.8 million dollars. Not a controlling stake, but not pocket lint either. Enough to be in the room, enough to ride the upside while Cummins deals with the fallout from the biggest Clean Air Act civil penalty in history.

You would think a shareholder in a scandal soaked engine maker might want clean hands. Natixis is the opposite. Misleading markets on subprime, gouging fund investors, backing a bombed out bond shop, mismarking derivatives, and turning up in a multi billion euro tax fraud probe.

Perfect company for Cummins to keep.

The Subprime Lie That Would Not Die

Start with the subprime era. In 2007, as the mortgage backed sewage was backing up through the global plumbing, Natixis put out a press release that played down its exposure. Investors were told not to worry their pretty little heads.

Years later, French prosecutors and the markets compared the spin with the actual risk. It did not match. In 2021 a Paris court found Natixis guilty of spreading false or misleading information about that subprime exposure and hit it with a 7.5 million euro fine, the maximum allowed for that offence at the time. They had, in blunt terms, bullshitted the market.

Natixis, of course, appealed. In 2024 France’s top court upheld the conviction but cut the fine. The legal headline stayed the same: they lied about the risk when it mattered, in one of the most catastrophic financial crises in living memory.

Nobody went to prison. Nobody lost their bonus. The institution carries on, now as a quiet shareholder in Cummins.

Formula Funds, Fancy Fees, And A 35 Million Euro Slap

If you want to see what Natixis thinks of clients, look at the way it treated its own fund investors.

In 2017 the French markets regulator AMF tore through Natixis Asset Management’s so called formula funds. Under the bonnet they found:

15.6 million euros in unjustified redemption fees
3.6 million euros charged above the stated management fee caps
12.5 million euros skimmed as extra margins on structured products

All in, the regulator said investors had been overcharged by tens of millions. The AMF fined Natixis Asset Management 35 million euros and spelled it out in plain French: they had not put fund holders first.

Natixis did its usual routine. Disagree, appeal, promise to do better. But the pattern was obvious. If there is a grey area between you and someone else’s money, they will explore it with both hands.

A couple of years later, the AMF’s enforcement committee hit Natixis Investment Managers International with a 2 million euro fine, and a related entity with 1 million, over breaches in securities lending and conflict handling. Different product line, same underlying contempt.

H2O: Illiquid Shit, Windhorst Bonds And A 717 Million Euro Lawsuit

Then there is H2O Asset Management, the London based bond shop that Natixis backed and then bolted from when the smell got too strong.

For years H2O boasted eye popping performance. Then journalists and analysts dug into the holdings and found huge chunks of illiquid, high risk debt tied to German financier Lars Windhorst, a man with a long history of bankruptcies and legal trouble.

Regulators froze funds. Redemptions were suspended. Retail and institutional investors were trapped in an illiquid mess.

Natixis owned the majority of H2O’s parent for most of the fun and was supposed to be the grown up in the room. By 2022 it had offloaded its stake and tried to put daylight between itself and the wreckage.

Investors were not impressed. In late 2023 a group of them launched a 717 million euro lawsuit in Paris against H2O, Natixis, KPMG and Caceis, arguing that controls failed and red flags were ignored while fees kept rolling in.

Whatever the final judgement, the basic story is ugly. Natixis hitched itself to a manager loading up on illiquid, related party junk, pocketed the upside, and then shrugged when the thing hit the wall and retail money got shredded.

Mismarked Derivatives And A CFTC Wake Up Call

Hop over to the United States and the picture does not improve.

In 2022 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that Natixis had agreed to pay 2.8 million dollars to settle charges over supervision failures. Between at least 2015 and 2019, the CFTC found that Natixis traders mismarked certain derivatives positions. In plain English: they booked values that did not reflect reality, distorting profit and loss, while management either did not spot it or did not stop it.

The order spelled out the failures in risk management, valuation and oversight. Again, nobody was frogmarched out in handcuffs. A cheque was written, the CFTC put out a press release, and Natixis moved on.

If you are keeping score, that is now multiple regulators, multiple product lines, same theme.

CumEx, CumCum And A Dawn Raid Invitation

Not a subheading I had anticipated writing this morning. I’m sipping Lemsip, a hot Lemsip, and now I have a Lemship burn. But, as Cummins knows, I’ll solider on through sickness and heath. Anyway…In 2023 Natixis woke up to a very different kind of knock on the door. French financial prosecutors launched coordinated raids on several major banks as part of the sprawling CumEx and CumCum dividend tax fraud investigations. Offices of BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Exane, HSBC and Natixis were all searched.

The core allegation in these schemes across Europe is simple and disgusting: sophisticated players traded shares around dividend dates in ways that allowed multiple parties to claim refunds on taxes that had only been paid once, if at all. In other words, siphoning money straight out of public treasuries.

Press reports at the time noted that combined fines for the banks involved could run over 1 billion euros if the authorities pursued the harshest options. Natixis said it was cooperating. So far the probe is ongoing, but being on that raid list is not exactly a badge of honour.

When tax authorities are raiding your offices over alleged multi billion frauds, it is safe to say your internal ethics compass is not pointing true north.

Still Buying Cummins While The Smoke Rises

Against that backdrop, Natixis’s Cummins holding is not enormous, but it is revealing.

Recent portfolio write ups put Natixis’s Cummins stake at roughly 85,019 shares, around 27.8 million dollars at current prices, after a reported ramp up in 2025. This is not passive drift. Somebody, somewhere inside Natixis has looked at Cummins – a company nailed for putting defeat devices into hundreds of thousands of Ram trucks and forced to swallow a record 1.675 billion dollar civil penalty for Clean Air Act violations – and said: yes, we want more of that.

Here at TCAP we have already walked through Cummins own rap sheet. Cheating on emissions, gigatonnes of tailpipe damage dressed up as “Destination Zero”, data centre diesel dependency, and a financial structure that treats fines as a cost of doing business. Natixis slotting itself into that ecosystem is not an accident. It is symmetry.

A bank that misled the market on subprime, gouged its own fund investors, sat atop an illiquid bond circus, let traders mismark derivatives, and ended up on the receiving end of tax fraud raids is now quietly banking upside on a serial polluter.

Birds. Feather. You know the rest.

Why Any Of This Should Piss Cummins Shareholders Off

If you are a Cummins shareholder who actually gives a shit about long term risk, this should bother you. Not because Natixis owns half the register – it does not – but because this is the calibre of “steward” the company attracts and relies on.

Natixis is exactly the sort of institution that will cheer on buybacks, sign off on whatever greenwashed transition story Cummins feeds the market, cash its dividends, and then plead ignorance when the next scandal lands. Their history says they do not ask the hard questions until regulators force their hand.

That might be comforting if you are a Cummins executive who just wants a quiet life in front of friendly analysts. It is a disaster if you actually care about whether the business survives the next wave of enforcement, climate regulation and litigation.

TCAP is not telling anyone to dump their stock. We are saying this: stop pretending the shareholder list is full of neutral, wise adults in the room. Natixis is on it. The record is what it is.

If Cummins wants to keep claiming it is powering a more prosperous world, maybe it should start by asking why so many of its financial backers look like they have just come out of central casting for “Banker Number Three – Indictment Montage”.

Until then, the rest of us will keep receipts.

Lee Thompson – Founder and Innovator, The Cummins Accountability Project

Shareholder Spotlight : Natixis – When Your Friendly Cummins Investor Has Its Own House on Fire