Company: BNP Paribas

State Street Chairman Jay Hooley has sent a not-so-subtle message to European banks: He's ready to buy their custody and trust operations.

French banks will likely feel the effects of both the victory of socialist Francois Hollande and political instability in Greece following elections there, with Credit Agricole in particular on investors' radars.

A pick-up in trading revenue in the first quarter of 2012 disguises a chilling future for investment banks who need to drastically cull their business under new regulation.

It would be wrong to assume that the euro zone has resolved Greece's sovereign debt crisis after the successful completion of the country's debt swap with its private creditors, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday.

Despite the recent rally in financial markets, stocks listed on the German benchmark DAX index still offer good value for investors and are a more attractive investment than those listed on Wall Street's S&P 500, Gerry Fowler, Global Head of Equity & Derivative Strategy at BNP Paribas told CNBC.

Despite the lingering debt crisis and an incubating recession in many nations of the European Union, many global companies say they are maintaining or even increasing their investments in the euro zone and elsewhere on the Continent. The NYT reports.

Moody's warned on Thursday it may cut the credit ratings of 17 global and 114 European financial institutions in another sign that the impact of the euro zone government debt crisis is spreading throughout the global financial system.

France's biggest listed bank said on Wednesday it saw positive signs for 2012 as the euro zone situation begins to stabilize and it reaps the rewards of hitting tougher capital targets six months early.

BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank by assets, has put on the block up to $11 billion of loans to oil and gas companies, the Financial Times reports.

BNP Paribas has been selling assets in order to be compliant with Basel 3 financial regulations by Jan. 1, Paribas North America CEO Everett Schenk told CNBC Thursday.

French financial-sector regulator ACP is preparing to tell the country's main banks to raise their writedowns on Greek debt to 70 percent or 75 percent from 60 percent, daily Le Monde reported on Wednesday.

French bank Societe Generale is forecasting a "significant" drop in 2012 investment-bank revenue compared with 2011, weighed by higher funding costs and efforts to slash its balance sheet, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters on Monday.

Volumes of Samurai bonds — yen-denominated bonds issued by non-Japanese entities — hit a 15-year high in 2011, and could be 20 percent higher in 2012, a Tokyo-based analyst told CNBC.com.

Fitch Ratings, the third-biggest of the major credit rating agencies, downgraded several global banks based in Europe and the United States, citing "increased challenges" in the financial markets.

In a world where the US no longer has a AAA and big economies like France and Germany risk losing theirs, investors are increasingly relying as much on their own judgment as on the opinions of ratings agencies.