Stress tests show French banks sound

WASHINGTON: Stress tests carried out by the Bank of France on French banks show that they are sound, the head of the nation's central bank said on Saturday.

"Our own stress tests, that we do regularly ... give us every confidence in the capacity of banks to get through the period ahead," Governor Christian Noyer said at a news conference on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

But he said there was no plan to release the results of the tests, in contrast to the United States where regulators have just concluded a special round of testing of the nation's 19 largest banks. U.S. regulators plan to disclose results of those tests the week of May 4.

"At this stage I do not envisage that, but we are not at all in the same situation," the central banker said of the possibility of public disclosure of French bank test results.

"The United States was confronted with a set of problems that we do not have."