“There is no risk because there is no possible contagion mechanism between the events we are seeing and the French banks”, said the banker, managing director of Crédit Agricole, on France Inter. “French banks are very solid due to regulation” et “there is no mechanism, as there might be in the past, of propagation”.
“French banks are solid”, repeated the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire. “Savers have nothing to worry regarding with their deposits. In Europe, we have the most demanding banking supervision system on the planet,” he said in an interview with Le Parisien on Saturday.
Since the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the United States on March 10, and despite the lifelines of the Swiss and American authorities, the banking sector relapsed on the stock market on Friday, dragging all the markets into the red.
As in the past week, concerns focus on Credit Suisse, one of 30 banks globally deemed too big to fail and which might be taken over in whole or in part by Switzerland’s largest bank. , UBS, from this weekend, in order to stop the panic.
“Almost all French banks are subject to specific prudential rules”, such as capital requirements, liquidity, interest rate risk management, listed the representative of French banks.
“With respect to American banks, there is no link between the balance sheets”, and with regard to Credit Suisse, “there is no possible contamination”, continued Mr. Brassac. Indeed, “since 2008 (…), the big banks no longer have the ability to link up with each other through monetary loans as we did in the past”, he further explained.
“For Credit Suisse, its difficulties have been known for a long time”, declared the French Minister of the Economy who said he was waiting for “a definitive and structural solution to the problems of this bank”.
