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This article proposes an exploration, based on discourse analysis and semiotics, of the institutional discourse of “self-presentation” of two “ethical and alternative” banks, the Crédit Coopératif and the Triodos bank. Our analysis aims to deepen the understanding of the discursive devices aimed at constructing a “different” identity, where the financial dimension and profitability are presented as being at the service of ethics and sustainability. We thus explore the staging of identities that borrow from both the cooperative movement and the financial world, the “civic city” and the “market city,” the general interest and the particular interest and, in Weberian terms, the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility.