But we look to large volumes of impairment

Elisabeth Grandin and Bernard de Longevialle, banking sector of the Standard & Poor's rating agency officials, believe that the results of the French banks will still be under pressure this year. "It is possible that there still impairment losses in the future," they suggest.

Have French banks well crossed the crisis

We are the most violent crisis since the second world war. From the point of view of the credit cycle was less violent than what could have been fear. The cost of the risk doubled for most of the banks, but this could have been worse. In our view, the peak of business failures has been reached in the third quarter of 2009. For SMEs and households, the rate of default should peak this year. It is therefore expected that 2010 is also hard, especially because of the rise in unemployment, but there is no significant deterioration.

Nevertheless the question of the abandonment of the different support measures...

Yes. The explosion was avoided last year, but credit risk will remain high for a moment. They will be more layer in time. In addition, revenues of banks should remain under pressure. Margins on deposits is very low and very moderate growth of credit outstanding, banks interest revenues remain under stress. Finally, in the activities of bank financing and investment (BFI), it is reasonable to expect a less exceptional than 2009 2010 year. Revenues from trading should return to more "traditional" levels and decline by 25 to 30. In total, the only positive impact should be the lowering of the cost of impairment losses on toxic assets, which were still weighed very heavy in 2009.

Société Générale has surprised by announcing in advance 1.4 billion euros of writedowns of additional assets for the 4th quarter. Will impairment losses continue

It is possible that there are still impairment losses in the future. As long as the US real estate market will be not stabilized, there will be potentially still further losses. But we look to large volumes of impairment. Société Générale has recorded total for 4 billion euros of writedowns in 2009. Their method of upgrading in "mark to model" led in practice to spread these haircuts. This is not necessarily finite. But this is not as important in 2010.

How do you see the year 2010

Taking into account all these factors, the French banks will have difficulty in increasing their results this year. We also believe that we should attend a certain convergence of performance between the various actors, after a year of very heterogeneous. Last year, all institutions were not able to take advantage of the good markets: BNP Paribas and Société Générale were in a better position that Calyon and Natixis. Some have also had difficulties in the international - Credit Agricole in Greece, Société Générale in Russia, BNP Paribas in Ukraine - to varying degrees. Others, it said, were affected by their toxic asset portfolios. The results should be more consistent this year.

What are the risks that create banks current turbulence of sovereign debt and the CDS markets

The volatility of the markets is not in itself a bad thing for the activities of banks. It can create needs for coverage of customers and opportunities for arbitration. If things stop there, either positive or negative impact should be fairly limited. A more serious scenario for banks and for the resumption would be that these turbulence translate into a general rebound in risk premiums and a bond crash.