Yesterday, Santander posted highly disturbing results. Today, a suite of French banks took a beating in the stock market as Standard & Poor downgraded the credit ratings of BNP Paribas, Cofidis and Banque Solfea as observed by the BBC.
S&P expressed grave concerns about the ability of French banks to withstand a prolonged Eurozone recession, which lets face it looks well and truly on the cards. The news shaved a hefty 3.3% off BNP shares, and 3.8% from Societe Generale – Credit Agricole seemed to take the biggest bashing however, suffering by 4.2%.
The negative pressure spearheaded a fall in the CAC 40 index which ended 0.6% lower