Sep 30, 2009
Will the French dominate post crisis?
The French BNP and the Barclays’ have definitely come out on top post-crisis and given parochial attitudes in both nations, their governments are likely to plan making heavy weather on the bad financial markets industry..but I wouldn’t say these repayments signify any better practices on the part of these wannabe practitioners on the global horizon, but rather the fact that they were bystanders during the banking explosion of the last decade.
They do maintain a continued conservative stance which will come in useful, but given the history of the markets..they are much more likely to be the source of the next big black hole in a few days (years) maybe. However, with Citi planning to get out of government stakes as well, this could really absorb the prior decades’ sentiments some more and yet faster..leaving us with a blank slate in which to regulate our childrens’ future.
Coming back to the French, they do not have the depth in their markets to fund expansion and their global diaspora in terms of expansion by SocGen and BNP hardly enough to give them currency to support their non US pro Iran , pro Russia stance. They could however be the closest Euro member state for the new nations in East Europe that have been trying to get a piece of the global economics in this last decade as also they could substantially support some African nations. Being pragmatic however, they are likely to discover faster that they really do not want significant exposure in these markets
BNP recently paid $19.8 billion for Fortis (October 2008) and has therefore significantly completed its footprint in West Europe while SocGen has been active in Asia ( Offshore from Singapore, JVs with SBI in India)
China has had a long history with European Banks with the Deutsche Asiatique Bank, British Belgian Industrial Bank of China and the Sino Belgian Bank which issued Taels (North Asian currency) during Siberian-Japanese-Chinese trade ‘wars’ of the late 19th century but has never been remunerative for Foreign bank ( Comparitively with India, Chinese have very few branches and investment assets in Foreign banks)
However, as of March 2009 Bank of china had already purchased 20% in the Paris based Banque de Rothschild and with BNP out of government indebtedness, its reasons for going into China would be more mercantile than ever.
BNP Paribas, the largest French bank, said on Tuesday that it would raise €4.3 billion from investors to repay government bailout funds, The New York Times’s David Jolly and Chris V. Nicholson reported.
BNP Paribas, based in Paris, said its board had decided to repay, within the next month, the €5.1 billion, or $7.5 billion, it borrowed from the state March 31. The government would also receive a payout of €226 million on the nonvoting preferred shares it purchased.
Baudouin Prot, BNP Paribas’s chief executive, said in a conference call that the G20 meeting in last week in Pittsburgh, where world leaders agreed in principle that banks should raise more capital, had influenced the timing of BNP’s decision to issue shares, as had the lender’s share price, which is up more than 92 percent this year.
Christophe Nijdem, a banking analyst at Alphavalue in Paris, called the stock issue’s timing “judicious.”
“They had a window of opportunity,” he said. “A lot of banks will turn to the market in the months to come, and it’s first come, first serve.”
Mr. Nijdem added that, compared to American banks, European banks were more leveraged, and had to play catch up. Major Western banks are forecast to post losses of almost $2.5 trillion for the period 2007-2010, according to the International Monetary Fund.
via BNP Paribas to Raise $6.27 Billion to Repay Bailout – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
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