This page is an archive, only available in English and French.
Mr Francis Mer, the French minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry, has given approval to a new team of primary dealers (SVTs), on recommendations by a Selecting Committee and by the Permanent Head of the Treasury. The selected establishments have a three-year renewable term, in compliance with the Charter for their activity, the main features of which were published in February 2003.
The following SVTs have been given a new term:
ABN Amro, Barclays Capital, BNP-Paribas, CDC-Ixis, Citigroup, Crédit Agricole Indosuez, Crédit Lyonnais, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Goldman Sachs, HSBC-CCF, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Natexis-Banques Populaires, Société Générale, UBM, and UBS.
Three more banks have become SVTs with the recent selection:
Crédit Suisse First Boston, Nomura, and Royal Bank of Scotland.
Commerzbank and Crédit Industriel et Commercial did not wish to apply for a new term.
After a one-year period, the newly selected SVTs will discuss the development of their operations as primary dealers with Agency France Trésor. Crédit Agricole Indosuez and Crédit Lyonnais will be considered as one single SVT when their trading teams are merged.
The new team currently enlists twenty-two banks (and, in the future, twenty-one), compared with twenty-one in July, 2001. There are six French banks, nine European banks, six US banks and one Japanese bank. This geographic diversity confirms the central role and the attractiveness of French sovereign debt, in the Euro-denominated debt market.