presentation of the 2018 annual report of the autorite de controle prudentiel et de resolution ( acpr ) press conference of 28 may 2019 speech by francois villeroy de galhau, governor of the banque de france, chairman of the acpr press contact : mark deen ( mark. deen @ banque - france. fr ). page 1 of 5 ladies and gentlemen, [ slide 1 ] i am pleased to welcome you to the presentation of the 2018 annual report of the autorite de controle prudentiel et de resolution ( acpr ), alongside bernard delas, vicechairman of the acpr, remi bouchez, president of the sanctions committee, and edouard fernandez - bollo, secretary general of the acpr. in 2018, the women and men of the acpr continued to work tirelessly to safeguard financial stability, in a context marked by the uncertainty – and at times the emergency – of brexit. i would like to thank them for their work. this morning, i shall focus on a topical issue – the profitability of banks and insurers in france and europe [ slide 2 ]. * * i. the profitability of french banks and insurers remains resilient the return on equity of france ’ s largest banks edged up by 0. 4 percentage points to 6. 7 % in 2018, i coming back in line with 2015 ’ s level. the maintenance of profitability levels needs to be viewed alongside the sharp rise in bank capital. french banks have strengthened their solvency and are now more robust. they have more than tripled their capital since the crisis. in parallel, they have raised their core capital ratios ( cet1 ) by nearly 8 percentage points since 2008, from an average of 5. 8 % to 13. 6 % in 2018 [ slide 3 ]. french banks ’ profitability is in line with the euro area average and well above that of their german counterparts. at an international level, only the us banks stand out as having an roe in excess of 10 %. french banks have come a long way in the past ten years, in a demanding economic, financial and regulatory environment. we need to be wary, therefore, about using two misleading points of reference, the first of which consists in comparing current roes to precrisis levels – when they were clearly too high – and the second in focusing on the cost of equity. apparently, the cost of equity

effective cooperation and the useful exchange of information between national supervisors. edouard fernandez - bollo also chairs the eba ’ s internal aml / ctf committee. the acpr conference on 21 june, which will focus on aml / ctf in its morning session, will be an opportunity to remind ourselves of the efforts we all need to keep making in this field. the acpr and banque de france are at the frontline of efforts to increase cyber - security in the financial sector, which is one of the priorities of france ’ s g7 presidency. let me remind you that there is no more certain threat to the financial sector than that of cyber - risks. given this urgency, we will be implementing concrete measures in the near future. the main ones are the shared “ categorisation ” of cyber - incidents, and the lessons to be drawn from the g7 cyber stress - test that will be organised by the banque de france at the start of june. * * the french economy has the advantage of having a solid financial system, the most solid in the euro area : france is a leader in essential activities such as life and non - life insurance, and asset management, and is home to four of the euro area ’ s eight global systemically important banks. the european supervisor can also rely on the expertise and experience of the acpr, which are recognised both in frankfurt and in europe. let ’ s make the most of these strengths in the context of brexit : without resting on our laurels – the supervisor will always remain vigilant and all of our institutions are aware of the scale of the challenges – but rather by drawing on our collective intelligence. page 5 of 5 i source : financial disclosures from bnpp, sg, gca, gbpce, gcm and lbp. according to the eba, the roe of french banks ( a broad sample ) is 6. 60 %. ii ecb, mario draghi ’ s introductory statement to the press conference on 10 april 2019. iii study by thomson reuters.