Quote from Butterball:
Market smells Greece mail fail any day and SG will be in touble once they do. Same issue @ Commerzbank.
Quote from nitrene:
The best analysis I've read on the French Banks is from French blogger JP Chevallier:
http://chevallier.biz/2011/08/french-gosbank-tsunami-risk/
The Tier 1 capital ratio of the 4 largest French banks is 3.7%:
BNP 3.7%
Credit Agricole 4.4%
Société Générale 2.0%
BPCE 4.6%
[BPCE is the 2009 merger of Banque Populaire & Caisse d'Epargne]
SocGen leverage is 50.4:1!!
The 4 Banks in aggregate would need about â¬360 billion just to get to the 10% Tier 1 ratio that the US banks have. Who knows how bad it is in the German, Swiss, Spanish, etc. banks.
Amazingly the 4 top French banks are also on the hook for â¬650 billion in loans to the PIIGS and â¬472 billion just to Italy.
SocGen is basically insolvent. Its just a matrer of time before they go belly up or the French Government will have to nationalize them.