Bond prices are starting to vindicate the decision by France’s biggest banks to ignore
Italian and Spanish debt even as the securities posted some of the best gains in Europe.
As government bonds rallied after Mario Draghi’s July 26 pledge to safeguard the euro,
BNP Paribas kept its holding of Italian debt little changed and Societe Generale cut its
ownership of Spanish bonds. Since last month’s inconclusive Italian election, the country’s
bonds have lost more money than any debt market in the world except Greece.
“Once bitten, twice shy,” said Christophe Nijdam, a banking analyst at AlphaValue. “In
the second half of 2011, French banks were under attack because of their exposure to
Italian sovereign debt.”
As new rules required lenders to revalue their investments to determine capital requirements,
European banks whittled holdings of debt in crisis-hit countries. While it meant
missing some of the gains in peripheral markets last year, it’s shielded them this year.