FNew Boss The populist wave in France has doubled the anxiety. When Emmanuel Macron called shock parliamentary elections in June, investors in French banks shunned it. The final round of elections on July 7 is likely to empower reckless spenders on either the radical left or the radical right. In an interview with Bloomberg in May, Mr. Macron made a rare political pitch for a more integrated banking market, including cross-border deals. Now a sharp election-related drop in the price of French government debt has revived memories of the “doomsday cycle” of the euro-zone crisis in the early 2010s.
More volatile politics could make European banks even more parochial and less ambitious than before. One exception is Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), which cannot be accused of either. The Spanish lender makes more than half of its profits in Mexico. After Spain, its next biggest market is Turkey, where the economy is so bad that BBVA uses “hyperinflation accounting” in its bookkeeping. And it's no shrinking violet at home. In May BBVA made a hostile €12 billion ($13 billion) offer to acquire Sabadell, a Spanish competitor it came close to buying in 2020.