The first half of 2009 should prove to be more lenient

After American, Scandinavian, Spanish and Japanese banks, and at the same time that the British, three French banks will publish their quarterly results this week. Highly anticipated, they should be marked by good performance on the markets and the rise of the cost of risk continued to varying degrees. ICC opens the ball today, followed tomorrow by Wednesday by Société Générale and BNP Paribas. Credit Agricole SA and Natixis to comply, for their part, to the exercise on August 27.

Subsidiary listed of the Credit Mutuel Centre Est Europe to the floating very limited, the CIC is not followed by the analysts and is therefore not the subject of a consensus. In the first half of 2008, the Bank had accused a loss of EUR 417 million under the weight of the depreciations in market activities, which had been forecast to decrease by 58 the results of the CMC - CIC group. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the Icelandic banks and the Madoff fraud had leaded the second half, but the transfer of 16.1 billion of outstanding portfolio of trading to the assets available for sale had allowed him to post a profit for the year. The first half of 2009 should prove to be more lenient.

BNP Paribas, the market table on profit net located between 1 and 1.4 billion euros against 1.5 billion a year earlier. Its accounts will consolidate for the first time - a month and a half - the results of Fortis, which the acquisition was completed mid-May. BNP Paribas is now the first Bank of deposit of the euro area and second banking market capitalization (55 billion euros), far behind Santander (more than 82 billion euros) which has published a quarterly net profit of EUR 2.4 billion last week.

Rise of the cost of risk

Analysts expect about a downturn in the result before tax of BNP Paribas in retail banking and management of assets, and on a strong growth of the Bank financing and investment. Eclipse the rise of the cost of risk the good performance on the market This is the question posed Nomura analysts in view of the stock route of Deutsche Bank and Credit Switzerland last week. Since the beginning of the year, the action BNP Paribas anyway won nearly 70, surperformant clearly index sector DJ Stoxx European banks (38).

For Société Générale, is another story. The Bank seems to have lost its speculative appeal to investors: his gain is only 26 since the beginning of the year, bearing its value at 27 billion. The Bank warned, on July 6 that it would be "slightly beneficiary", quarterly accounts to incorporate a negative accounting impact of 1.3 billion euros on its CDS. However, provisions for credit risk should not greatly increase from the first quarter, while the impact of its assets risky on his accounts should be limited. At the time, the consensus of analysts polled by Reuters table on a net profit of a little less than EUR 100 million against 644 million a year earlier.