Francine Swiggers is Chairman of the Management Board of the ARCO Group, she succeeded Rik Branson.
In 1935 the Landelijk Verbond van Christelijke Coöperaties (LVCC) (E: Rural League of Christian Cooperations) was established.
The LVCC later became shareholder of Catholic organisations such as the Welvaart (E: Prosperity) grouping of cooperative shops, the BAC-Centrale Depositokas and the Antwerpse Volksspaarkas, De Volksverzekering and the Centre for insurance of risks of Christian working-class families In 1945 the LVCC, together with the verbondelijke coöperatieve vennootschappen is embedded within the ACW.
[1] In 2016, the Belgian jurist and author, Drieu Godefridi, published an opinion on the website of the magazine Le Vif in which he considered that the compensation of ARCO cooperators for an amount of 600 million euros by the Belgian State is crony capitalism.
[2] In fact, the Leterme government, whose Prime Minister was Yves Leterme in the CD&V-MR-PS-cdH-Open VLD coalition, extended the bank guarantee of 100,000 euros to ARCO's 780,000 cooperators, mostly Flemish, following the failure of the Belgian bank Dexia, of which ARCO was one of the main shareholders and also the financial arm of the Algemeen Christelijk Werknemersverbond (Christian Workers' Movement in Flanders) linked to the political party CD&V.